On The Radar with Jess

Twas the Peak of the Atlantic Hurricane Season and not a System Was Stirring...

Jessica Arnoldy Jessica Arnoldy

September 10th is the official peak of the Atlantic Hurricane season, a time period where one would expect the National Hurricane Center to be monitoring something, even if there wasn't a named system. However, the basin is mercifully quiet:

NHC Seven-Day Tropical Weather Outlook

It is pretty rare to not have even an area to watch highlighted on the NHC outlook. In fact, take a look at the past 10 years where there was at least one area to watch if not multiple areas and named systems:

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Typically, about 60% of the season occurs after September 10th so we still have a while before we can stop worrying about the tropics. In 2024, Francine, Helene, and Milton all made landfall after September 10th. But, is there anything worth watching?

As I mentioned in Monday's blog post, the GFS has indicated the potential for something to form from the Central American Gyre (CAG) and move north into the Gulf. Below are the GFS ensemble members valid for next week that do show a small possibility for development.

Image 13

But as you can see in the below model images, there's not a ton of support for that between the Euro, Euro AI, and Google AI models:

Image 14 Image 15 Image 16Nevertheless, we can never turn our eyes away from the Gulf this time of year, especially since anything that forms in that area wouldn't have much time before making landfall. Remember Hurricane Michael in 2018 and even Helene and Milton from 2024? All 3 of those systems went from not even being a designated system to strong hurricane landfall in less than five days. See the initial advisories from each storm below:

That area will remain stormy as you can see the rain forecast for the next 7 days so it isn't out of the realm of possibilities we get a system from the CAG:

Image 17
Outside of the Gulf, most models agree that a tropical wave in the Main Development Region of the Atlantic could develop by early next week. All models support this possibility but we've been down this road before with 91L the first week of September and that system never developed. But all models as you can see in the below images show a high possibility of something happening:

Image 20Image 19

Image 18

If a system were to form this time next week, it would still be over a week away from potential US impacts so there's a long time to watch it.  

 

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Jessica Arnoldy, Director of Meteorology Services at Weatherstem
Jessica Arnoldy
Director, Content and Meteorology Services

Jessica brings nearly two decades of broadcast and operational meteorology experience to Weatherstem. She spent 19.5 years as a senior meteorologist at The Weather Channel and holds a BS from Georgia Tech and MS from Penn State. She writes On The Radar to help emergency managers, athletic directors, and operations teams understand what severe weather means for their specific situations.

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