As the calendar reaches mid-August, the environment over the tropical Atlantic Ocean typically becomes more favorable for tropical cyclone formation.\u00a0 The Sea Surface Temperature warms and vertical wind shear decreases.\u00a0 Despite the ongoing El Nino in the tropical Pacific Ocean, we are seeing the typical pattern develop in the Atlantic for this time of year.\u00a0 A low level circulation within an area of thunderstorms over the eastern Atlantic Ocean became better organized on Tuesday and the National Hurricane Center classified the system as Tropical Depression Four (TD4).\u00a0 At 11:00 a.m. EDT on Tuesday the enter of Tropical Depression Four was located at latitude 10.6\u00b0N and longitude 36.5\u00b0W which put it about 1665 miles (2765 km) east of the Windward Islands.\u00a0 TD4 was moving toward the west at 13 m.p.h. (20 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 35 m.p.. (55 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 45 m.p.h. (75 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 1009 mb.<\/p>\n
TD4 is currently in an environment that is favorable for intensification.\u00a0 The upper level winds are light and the thunderstorms are generating upper level divergence in all directions.\u00a0 It is currently over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 28\u00b0C.\u00a0 As long as TD4 moves westward, it will stay over warmer water and intensification will be likely.\u00a0 If TD4 were to move more toward the northwest, then it would move over slightly cooler water and less intensification would occur.\u00a0 Since TD4 is forecast to move west, it is expected to become Tropical Storm Danny, and it could be a hurricane later this week.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge north of TD4 is steering it toward the west and that steering motion is expected to continue for the next 24 to 48 hours.\u00a0 Later this week an upper level trough passing north of the ridge is expected to weaken the ridge, which could cause TD4 to move northwesterly for a day or so.\u00a0 After the upper level trough moves off to the east, the subtropical ridge is forecast to steer TD4 back more toward the west.\u00a0 On its anticipated track TD4 is expected to be east of the Windward Islands this weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the calendar reaches mid-August, the environment over the tropical Atlantic Ocean typically becomes more favorable for tropical cyclone formation.\u00a0 The Sea Surface Temperature warms and vertical wind shear decreases.\u00a0 Despite the ongoing El Nino in the tropical Pacific Ocean, we are seeing the typical pattern develop in the Atlantic for this time of year.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[138,139,137],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1360,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359\/revisions\/1360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}