By now, you have no doubt heard about Isaac. Plenty covered in my opinion. There is enough media coverage to scare the wits off of the east third of the country, and every along the Gulf Coast....I digress. While getting the word out is extremely important, at this point, precautions should have been done already.
So what's next, says I? Checking out the tropics, as of Monday night, there are no current named storms, but there are some spots that show signs of development down the road. Tropical models show 2 areas of interest in the Atlantic which could strengthen enough to become named in the coming days.
One in particular, it's currently (again, as of Monday night) just barely off the western African coast. It is no more than a tropical wave at this point, and will likely stay that way at least for the next 3-4 days. As that wave travels west, it will be allowed to gain some organization and strengthen potentially into a named storm. Tropical systems need to develop sustained winds of 29 mph or greater to become named. If it does, it would be either Joyce or Kirk (dependent on if another system gets named before this one).
I am most interested in this system because of its forecast placement. A few models, including the trusted ECMWF and GFS model take the storm to near the Eastern Caribbean, and eventually through the Bahamas. Anytime a system goes through the Bahamas, we need to pay more attention on the east coast and sometimes in New England. The nature of flow in the Atlantic mostly tends to roll systems north up the east coast if it starts near the Bahamas. Take a glance at the photo, left, and this is just one model solution for early September, around the 3rd, showing a developing tropical system in the Caribbean.
While this is still plenty of time away, and you shouldn't be worried about anything at this point, it's my job to do the worrying and look out days ahead of time to keep you up to speed, should you need to know something important.
