Looking Ahead to Next Week in the Caribbean
Does the hurricane season have more in the tank or does next week pass with little fanfare?
A strong late-season tropical wave now moving through the central Atlantic could develop once it enters the Caribbean as upper-level winds turn increasingly conducive next week.
The next named storm candidate – something we first mentioned in this newsletter on Monday and have been discussing all week – isn’t a slam dunk case and could fester in the Caribbean under light steering into next weekend (weekend of October 25th).
The National Hurricane Center introduced the formation potential area in its tropical outlook Thursday afternoon and for now is maintaining low odds of development through late next week.
October and November tend to see higher forecast errors than earlier months of the season due to unsettled fall weather patterns, which can add a wrinkle to forecasts.
With the development window still 4 to 7 days out, we’ll need some time to sort this one out.
East or west Caribbean development?
So far, most forecast models have advertised little in the way of development until the system reaches the western Caribbean, where, as we showed in Wednesday’s newsletter, wind shear is expected to relax by late next week.
Since yesterday, however, the AI model camp in particular – including the strong-performing Google DeepMind – has pivoted farther east, earlier, and stronger with their development signal next week.
These models appear to be latching on to a scenario where the disturbance gets picked up ahead of a strong fall front brushing into the Caribbean, which both enhances the outflow, helping to strengthen the system, and turns it northeast toward parts of the Greater Antilles (Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico) before it gets to the western Caribbean.
This has also been the scenario depicted by the American GFS.
The main holdout on a west-leaning scenario as of Friday morning was the conventional physics-based European model and some of its ensemble members, but even many of those scenarios eventually turn the system sharply northeast toward the Greater Antilles by next weekend.
So for the time being this is one to watch for either the Caribbean islands or parts of Central America next week. For Florida, this is just one to monitor, but nothing to be concerned about at this point.
How often do hurricanes hit the U.S. this late in the season?
By mid-October, cold fronts typically make their way through Florida and into the western Atlantic with increasing regularity, helping to deflect would-be storms before they ever pose a problem. We’ll see another such front clear South Florida by the middle part of next week.
This of course makes for drier and more pleasant weather through the Sunshine State, but it also makes significant U.S. hurricane threats notably less common.
Only about a dozen hurricanes in the 175-year hurricane history books have struck the mainland U.S. after October 22nd, or about once every 15 years.
So it’s not that it never happens, but it’s a once-in-a-blue-moon event when it does.
Unfortunately for Florida, however, those late season hurricanes that do target the U.S. usually take aim at us. Of the dozen hurricanes to have struck the mainland U.S. after October 22nd, about 2 in 3 made landfall in Florida.
Late October storms that hit Florida tend to come out of the western Caribbean or southern Gulf while the rare November storm that comes our way typically does so from the Atlantic waters directly east of the peninsula, like Hurricane Nicole back in 2022, the latest hurricane on record to hit Florida’s peninsula.
No concerns elsewhere in the Atlantic
The National Hurricane Center has tagged a non-tropical area of low pressure over the far north Atlantic east of the U.S. for possible subtropical development over the next few days. For now, odds are low it transitions into a subtropical system, and it’s expected to be moving east over open water is no threat to land.
It seems like Google AI went into the NHC & took over. I can't trust a profit based company on the weather.
So, I'm more grateful than ever for you, Mr. Lowry. Tysm for your dedication to helping us understand what's going on, through all the ups & downs of whatever is going on 💓💓💓
With regard to your point about few late season hurricane landfalls, that ignores post-tropical cyclones that have transitioned like hurricane Sandy. In the science of hurricane impacts, we tend to still consider those tropical cyclone related events given their huge potential rainfall and storm surge from all the energy they obtained during their tropical cyclone period. Any assessment of risk needs to include these.