AccuWeather's Bernie Rayno monitors the Atlantic basin where potential tropical wave may occur as it heads towards the Caribbean islands while battling dry air, which affects development.
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00:00There it is, I have it circled. This is around 50, I'm coming up on 52, 53 degrees west, about 13 degrees north.
00:08Still a couple of days away or to the east-southeast of the islands.
00:12Now, we showed you this chart yesterday. This is a kind of a different look at this system.
00:17It's kind of a flow chart and what has to happen for this to develop.
00:22And there are two main hurdles that this tropical wave is going to be facing.
00:27The first is the dry air. Is it going to survive the dry air? I think it is.
00:32Now, it's not going to develop, but I think it's going to be able to move through this dry air.
00:38It's not going to develop, but it will still have some semblance of organization.
00:42So, I think it's going to clear the first hurdle.
00:45Here's the second hurdle and this is the one that is going to be the trickiest.
00:49Where exactly does this system move in relation to Cuba and Hispaniola?
00:54If it goes right across those islands, it will likely not survive.
00:58And if that's the case, it will then dissipate.
01:01However, if it can move around the islands, whether it's to the north or to the south and survive,
01:07then the answer is yes and you go to this step.
01:10And this is where we could have some problems.
01:13Could become a storm near Florida as we head toward the weekend.
01:17Now, that could be in the eastern Gulf of Mexico or it could be in the southwest Atlantic,
01:20but the time frame would be this weekend.
01:24I think it's going to clear this hurdle.
01:26This is the question mark.
01:28And if it survives that, then we could be looking at a storm as we head toward the weekend
01:33as that system moves to the north and west.
01:36Now, there it is. We're talking about the dry air.
01:38I have it circled and you can see the dry air that is surrounding it.
01:41However, I don't see any dry air coming in and around where that wave is,
01:46at least where we see most of the convection.
01:48So, that tells me it will likely be able to survive the dry air.
01:52It won't organize, but it will hold its own.
01:56Then as it moves toward the islands, a couple of things going on here.
02:00I think the dry air is going to start dissipating.
02:02And the other thing that we're going to see is less wind shear.
02:05Now, it's already in an area where it doesn't have a lot of wind shear.
02:08It's denoted by that light purple shading.
02:11And you'll notice that in the eastern Caribbean and over the Lesser Antilles,
02:15there's not a lot of wind shear.
02:17So, if we can get rid of that dry air and the wind shear remains light
02:21and the forecast is for the shear to remain light,
02:24then I think this system could organize a little bit.
02:27That would be as we get into Wednesday and Thursday as it nears Puerto Rico.
02:32And then this is the second hurdle.
02:36And that will be Thursday night into Friday
02:38as it comes in contact with Cuba and Hispaniola, depending on where it goes.
02:42But as I mentioned, if it gets past this hurdle
02:46and gets into the eastern Gulf of Mexico or the southwest Atlantic
02:50in this vicinity, there are favorable conditions
02:54for at least organization and development
02:56in that there's going to be abundant moisture and low wind shear.
03:00So, we're going to continue to track this system throughout the rest of this week.