Lots of disturbed weather currently over the Caribbean Sea (Image courtesy of NOAA)
You may have noticed the increasingly active area of weather simmering over the Caribbean Sea these days. This area of disturbed weather has lingered and grown in coverage over recent days and it’s stuff like this with a large envelop of energy which must be watched when you see pressures fall and you have a favourable MJO pulse coinciding.
What is the MJO? It’s a pulse of increased convection which circles the tropical globe over a general 40 day period, this pulse is known as the Madden Julian Oscillation and a important deature all tropical forecasters watch carefully during the tropical season.
Courtesy of NOAA
When this pulse is over an area, one must watch for the increase in convection and ‘potential’ development. This feature moistens as well as lowers pressures across an area of the ocean and can act as an incubator for development.
The above chart shows where there is likely a favourable environment with greens indicating upward motion or convection and where yellow, brown or red, these areas are unfavourable with sinking air.
Notice how the Atlantic basin is generally favourable through the next couple of weeks and then this model run which happens to be the GFS shows unfavourable conditions beyond the first 7-10 days of July.
Below is the MJO Index Forecast and where you have the green line and the collage of yellow lines working into phase 1 (west hem, west Africa), Joe Bastardi of WeatherBell states this favours development on the Pacific coast of Mexico and when in phase 2, this favours the Atlantic side of the Mexico. Interestingly enough, this line over the next 10 days has the Caribbean favourable for development.
Courtesy of ECMWF
Of course the all the messy weather across the Caribbean, one should consider this large area of energy bungling. Models shows this energy collecting together over the NW Caribbean, pushing over the Yucatan and developing somewhere between the Bay of Campeche and the south-central Gulf.
Pressures are expected to lower over the Gulf over the next several days and it will be interesting to see with this weather as it projects northwestwards, what happens over the Gulf. High pressure late this week intensifies over Texas but I recon the Texas coast should watch this carefully.
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