September 22nd, The Atlantic Wakes Up

In case you missed it, not only did Gabrielle become the second hurricane of the 2025 Atlantic Season, but it also became the second major hurricane. Gabrielle underwent rapid intensification overnight Sunday into Monday and became a major hurricane with winds of 120 mph by 11 am ET, an increase of 55 mph from the 11 pm advisory on Sunday when it only had winds of 75 mph.

As we mentioned last week, it poses no threat to the US and is even passing safely east of Bermuda with just elevated surf conditions: 

It isn't just Gabrielle we need to worry about though. The NHC is also watching 2 additional areas of interest and all of a sudden, the Atlantic Basin map has gotten crowded: 

   
We are going to spend most of this blog discussing the area of interest further to the west (the orange area above) as that entity has the biggest chance of bringing impacts to the US. While I typically will avoid posting single model runs, since we are a less than a week away its important to note that both the GFS and the Euro operational runs have a tropical system off the southeast coast by Sunday afternoon. Both are in fairly good agreement on positioning of the system with the EURO (left image) with a weaker system than the GFS (right image): 

Not only do both of our main models have this system, their ensembles do as well, as does the Google AI ensembles:

In fact, the Google AI model picked up on this possibility well before any of the other models did and has been consistently depicting a system moving through the Bahamas late this weekend into early next week. 

What will determine how far west this system gets? Well as we discussed in last week's blog, a storm system will be slowly working its way across the country, bringing much needed rain to the eastern half of the US that has seen a dramatic increase in drought conditions. A widespread 2-3" of rainfall will fall through Saturday morning:  

You can follow the progress of the system bringing the widespread rain and storms across the eastern half of the country in the below images. Tuesday morning, the system is draped across the center of the country:

By Thursday, it is moving through the Ohio and Tennessee valleys, spreading rain and storms across the Eastern US:

And finally by Sunday, this system should be off of the East coast...you can even see a potential tropical system depicted over the Bahamas:   

We will do daily updates on this system until it no longer poses a threat to the US so be sure to follow up for updated information.