AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva was live on the AccuWeather Network on Sept. 19 to discuss the next tropical threat for the United States.
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00:00Joining us right now is Acuia, the lead hurricane expert, Alex DaSilva.
00:04And Alex, you were part of the team, you and the long-range forecasting team that
00:09upgraded our threat for tropical development, first from a low to a moderate yesterday morning,
00:16and then late in the morning before noon, the decision was made to go with a high risk.
00:21Yeah, I'll tell you, Bernie, the more and more I look at this, the more and more concerned I'm
00:25growing about a potential hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico mid to late next week.
00:30All the factors are coming together, which is why we decided to upgrade
00:34and go high risk for development during the middle to latter portions of next week.
00:38Again, focusing on the Western Caribbean,
00:40that's where the storm's likely to form, and then moving up into the Gulf of Mexico.
00:44Now, everybody wants to know, okay, we get development there,
00:47where is it going to go from there? And we created this graphic yesterday morning
00:52to give people options. And listen, it's not an easy question to answer right now.
01:00There are different avenues for this storm to go.
01:04Certainly, it's going to depend on how deep that trough comes down into the Gulf of Mexico.
01:08Now, that piece of energy is still way out over the Pacific right now,
01:12which makes it very difficult to forecast how deep or how strong that trough is going to be.
01:17So we still have several days to kind of fine tune this. But I will say this,
01:21if it's a stronger trough, it's more likely to pull the storm more north and east
01:25towards maybe the peninsula of Florida or the Big Bend area.
01:28If it's a little bit weaker, that can allow the storm to meander a little bit further
01:31northwest in the Gulf and then maybe threaten more of the northern Gulf Coast.
01:36So a little still some forecasting decisions to be made there.
01:40But the ingredients are there for not only development, but intensification, Alex.
01:47And of course, we always begin with the water temperatures.
01:49Yeah, we always talk about this. We've been saying this since the beginning of the year,
01:52that the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean are the warmest they've ever been.
01:56And this is what is going to add essentially that rocket fuel for the storm.
02:00No problems here in terms of how warm the waters are mid to upper 80s.
02:04And you can see those temperature anomalies there.
02:06Everywhere in orange or red are temperatures above average.
02:10And you can see almost the entirety of the Atlantic Basin.
02:12But you can look in the Western Caribbean there.
02:15That is where we see those more deep orange colors.
02:17That means the temperatures there are far above where they should be this time of the year.
02:21And Alex, it's not just the water temperatures on the surface.
02:24You were telling me that one of the other ingredients we look at is how
02:29deep is the warm water in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.
02:34It's called ocean heat content. And those numbers are off the charts.
02:39They certainly are. That part of the Atlantic,
02:41Western Caribbean, is the warmest in terms of ocean heat content.
02:44The 80-degree water temperature line extends down 300 to 400 feet
02:50below the surface of the ocean. So certainly very impressive there.
02:53And essentially that's what's going to help to fuel the engine
02:56of what is going to likely become a tropical storm and then eventually a hurricane.
03:00So far this season, one thing that we've seen in the Atlantic Basin is wind shear.
03:04Strong winds aloft that tend to weaken tropical systems.
03:08What we did was we took a snapshot of the winds high up in the atmosphere here
03:13to look at what wind shear is at least forecasted in this area.
03:18And when you look at it, you don't see a lot of white lines,
03:21which means there's not a lot of wind shear.
03:23Yeah, we have the warm temperatures, lots of moisture and low wind shear.
03:27Those are the ingredients essentially to have a strengthening tropical system.
03:30We're certainly going to, looks like we're going to have that
03:33low wind shear across that Western Caribbean area.
03:35And then as the storm moves north, there could be a little bit wind shear,
03:38but it might actually aid in the development of the storm.
03:41Sometimes if you get the wind shear in just the right position,
03:44can actually help to ventilate the storm.
03:46We saw that with Barrel earlier this year.
03:48And so that is the concern that the wind shear to the north
03:52might actually help to ventilate and strengthen the storm once it gets into the Gulf.
03:56Back here with the lead hurricane expert, Alex DaSilva.
03:59Alex, thanks for joining us here.