Tropical Storm Fred, the 6th named tropical cyclone of the Atlantic hurricane Season 2021 is next in line to turn towards the Caribbean and potentially also impacting the United States around the next weekend.
Tropical storm warnings have been posted across the eastern Caribbean as a system gathers power and takes shape southeast of Dominica, the National Hurricane Center said.
With winds of 35 miles (56 kilometers) per hour, the system will likely become Tropical Storm Fred late Monday or early Tuesday local time, the center said in advisory at 5 p.m. New York time.
The storm is threatening to hit Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and potentially Cuba later this week, but its exact path remains unclear. The system will likely be south of Florida by this weekend if it survives the trek over the larger Caribbean islands.
“Regardless of the exact track, locally heavy rainfall and gusty winds are expected to spread across portions of the Leeward Islands, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic over the next day or two,” Daniel Brown and Philippe Papin wrote in forecast analysis.
Five storms have already been named across the Atlantic this year, including three that hit the U.S. They come as extreme heat waves, floods and fires are becoming more common around the globe. The United Nations on Monday released a landmark report Monday concluding that there is “unequivocal” evidence that human activities have warmed the atmosphere.
A record 30 storms formed in 2020, about twice the annual average. They caused $42.3 billion in losses and damage and killed 86 people in the U.S. alone, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information. In addition, back-to-back storms caused more than $3 billion to Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua and left much of the region still struggling to recover.
Storms tracking into the Gulf of Mexico are closely watched because they can roil natural gas, oil, and orange juice prices as they tear through the region.
Just a few days after the official release of the recent NOAA seasonal outlook for the ongoing Hurricane Season, the tropical western Atlantic is about to churn a new Tropical Storm. It will be Fred. Typically, the 6th named tropical cyclone forms on August 28th, so the season remains nearly 3 weeks ahead of the schedule.
As we are now entering the mid-August period, the activity over the Atlantic Ocean statistically begins increasing. The very warm sea waters are coinciding with a major MJO wave, emerging into the Caribbean region and the tropical Atlantic from the west (Pacific). The combination of both will now boost the ongoing activity further.
Note, that the eastward-moving MJO wave normally has a major influence on the state of the atmosphere which allows tropical storms or hurricanes to develop. They require a very warm sea temperature (26 °C or above), high moisture, low vertical wind shear, and a surface low-pressure system.
Above: Tropical cyclone names for 2021
When such conditions as recently are in place, especially with extremely warm sea waters and great upper-level support by MJO waves and low shear in place, a tropical cyclone could become a hurricane very quickly. Even a violent, major hurricane when conditions are near perfect. According to the recent data, as we see, these will likely strongly influence the peak Atlantic hurricane season this year.
Besides the wind intensity and lowest pressure in the tropical cyclones, we also use a so-called Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE index). A parameter that we use to express the energy that was used during the tropical cyclone’s lifetime. So we can compare every tropical storm or hurricane with the other. There are 4 categories to classify storms by the ACE index, from the extremely active to above, near, and below-average activity.
Such water temperatures are a very significant signal for the upcoming tropical cyclones that may move across this part of the tropical region. As it often leads to an explosive development of the tropical systems when convective storms encounter such a warm and moist fuel ingested from the sea surface.
The recent weeks over the tropical Atlantic region had mostly calm weather patterns, allowing the SSTs to become anomalously warm, especially across the known region – the MDR region (Main Development Region) that extends across the Atlantic between Africa and the Caribbean Sea.
Below is a high-resolution animation of the Atlantic Basin oceanic waters temperature anomalies, covering the whole Atlantic Basin as well as the MDR region where the majority of the tropical cyclone formations occur.
Tropical Storm Fred forms in the very warm waters of Atlantic Ocean
Having such significant temperature anomalies does hint at the enhanced potential for significant tropical cyclone development in the coming weeks as we are heading towards the most dangerous period around the peak of the Atlantic Hurricane Season, occurring from late August through September and October.
Very high sea temperatures will remain or even improve in the coming weeks ahead. And statistically, these SSTs are quite typical signs during August when an active Atlantic hurricane season follows.
The post Storm Warnings As Fred Forms in E. Caribbean appeared first on The St Kitts Nevis Observer.