Gabrielle Struggles in the Atlantic While Drought Expands Across US

In case you missed it, the NHC did designate Tropical Depression 7 as Tropical Storm Gabrielle on Wednesday. While it has struggled the first couple of days of its life, it has started to fire some convection around the center which should allow it to strengthen in the days ahead:

Clear consensus between all models that it passes well east of the US and even looks to past east of Bermuda but should strengthen to a hurricane as it does so:

That's all we are currently monitoring in the Tropical Atlantic as Gabrielle ended a 20-day streak without an Atlantic storm. There are signs that we could need to turn our attention to the western Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico late this month and early in October but that's a long way a way. Still, there's been an uptick in storm formation from several of the models, including the Google AI and Euro AI which have both done well this year in predicting tropical systems. The Google AI is below: 

This is a climatologically favored region in late September/early October so there'd be no surprise to have a system form here. It isn't anything to worry about yet but we will watch it in the days to come.  

Meanwhile back across the US, Southern California has received some rain from the remnants of Mario. Our weather stations in Ventura County reported up to half an inch of rain and residents woke up to the sound of rain for the first time since April:

Even Las Vegas has reported rain on Thursday. What's interesting is that much of the eastern half of the country could use the rain as drought has expanded rapidly across the region the past 6 weeks:

But the good news is it looks like we will set up a wetter pattern over this region starting mid next week. You can see this is the CPC 6-10 precipitation outlook and in both the Euro and GFS ensemble rain forecast.