Tropical Weather Impact update: The tropics at a glance

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]Good evening everybody. It is Tuesday evening. It's 9:00. Let's do the tropical update. First of all, names for this season. Arthur, Bertha, Crystal, Dolly, Edward. You may notice some familiar names here from years gone by.

[00:00:12]We do recycle the names every few years.

[00:00:15]Otherwise, we just run out of them. uh if we get a a powerful storm uh like like a hurricane Ike uh like a Harvey, those names are retired and you'll never see them again on the list. So all the names you see here are storms that have not broached record-breaking or done serious damage to life and property uh over the years. Kyle, Leah, Marco, Nana, and Nana. That's grandma. That bothers me that Nana's in there, but we're going to have to go with it. hurricane season.

[00:00:47]So, we're at the beginning. Usually, quite often, it is quiet. It's actually June the 2nd. We're right in here. We're in the early part. And it's about every other year we get a storm in June. July, we get one or two usually. And then August, September, that's when if we're going to have an active season, that's when things ramp up. And that's the the area you see right here. September 10th being the statistical peak. And I go over all this stuff with you first because things are quiet out there, but it's not always like that in June. This is a quick look at the history of all the tracks uh in uh in June. These are all the June landfalling hurricanes. I want to back this up a little bit. So again, what you're looking at are all of the since 1900, all of the June hurricanes, not tropical storms. We've had several tropical storms. These are the ones that actually became hurricanes and then made landfall in the United States. So, three criteria, June, hurricane made landfall. And it's it's interesting to look at this map. This map fascinates me because the last time we had a June hurricane landfall was Bonnie in 1986. That one hit Bowmont, Port Arthur. Since 1986, we have not had a June landfalling hurricane. And also just kind of looking at the stats here, look at the coast of Texas. We had one hit in 1921, 1929, 1936, 1913, 1909. Here's one, Vermillion Bay, Louisiana, 1934.

[00:02:21]So the early 1900s and into the 1930s was very busy for whatever reason for June landfalling hurricanes.

[00:02:33]1906 went one across Florida Keys.

[00:02:35]Here's one in 1945.

[00:02:38]So, uh, the early part of the 1900s was very busy. Since then, it's been really quiet except for Bonnie in 1986.

[00:02:47]It doesn't mean we're due.

[00:02:50]It doesn't mean that um, mother nature, you know, like so this hundredyear look back, so 125 year look back to 1900, that is such a tiny blip in time, it's almost irrelevant.

[00:03:03]uh typical June development stats that we know of, they develop here in June, Gulf, Northwest Caribbe, up the east coast. And they do that because the water's warmer um and quite often we're still getting frontal boundaries push off into the northern Gulf in June. That happens. We're having one coming through right now. those get out here and that basically a surface front is an elongated trough of low pressure and sometimes that can become focused and produce a tropical system. So also sea surface temperature. So we look out here and in the Gulf it's plenty warm.

[00:03:37]Anything above 80 that's the threshold for tropical development. 88 is the current surface temperature in the southern uh Gulf of the Bay of Campe.

[00:03:45]Mid80s here in the middle Gulf. I I I clicked on the the loop current here.

[00:03:50]And then this is about 100 miles off the coast of Galveastston. So plenty warm here and you can see how warm it is in the northwest Caribbe 87. It kind of begins to fall off 85 84 into the eastern Caribbe. And then here's a perfect example. So 84 right in the Gulf Stream. So comes up here. We got little loop current goes out up the east coast.

[00:04:10]That's their Gulf Stream. And so that's a little little ribbon of warm water.

[00:04:14]And I clicked right in there to get that 84. It's not nearly as warm outside of that current out here. Here we're in the 70s and that's too cool for tropical development. So plenty warm in the region where if we're going to get a storm in June, we'd get one. When you look deeper into the season, this is the the main development area when everything is open for business. When sea surface temps have warmed in the main development region out in the open Atlantic, they're plenty warm here, plenty warm in the Gulf and the Caribbean. Then everything gets open and that's when we can see the long track storms that form off the west coast of Africa and just have, you know, forever to come through the Caribbean and perhaps get into the Gulf. Those are those can be very strong. Those can give us plenty of time to plan, but quite often we'll get storms that form here or here right on our doorstep and we don't have a week to plan. So now's the time to get everything prepped. If you're inland, you're going to stay put.

[00:05:14]You want to have supplies, food and water, so you can camp out for 5 days at your house. Food and water in my hurricane kit. This does not have to be expensive. This can be so simple. You know what I have? I've got boxes of crackers that are in a I find a brand that's in a nice foil pouch so they're sealed. Some high quality, you know, um just crackers, any saltines will do and a few jars of peanut butter. It does.

[00:05:43]We're not talking about we're not going to the hotel. We're just want food so that we can stay home and just stay out of stay off the roads. Just stay away from the panic that can be out there before, during, and after a storm.

[00:05:56]You're safe at home with peanut butter, crackers. I've got uh dry pasta and spaghetti sauce. And I've got a little Coleman stove that I've been in my family since the 1970s. The little tiny little stove. So, I can I can warm up some water uh and I can cook spaghetti and I can eat peanut butter and crackers with whatever family's at my house and we're safe. We don't have to go anywhere. It's all I need. We got we got some gallons of water.

[00:06:22]It it doesn't have to cost anything. If you have medical issues, if make sure you've got extra medicine, extra prescriptions if you can't get out for a couple of weeks, if you have a big one.

[00:06:32]Uh and of course, if you have little ones, extra diapes, baby food, whatever, baby care, have that for at least a week so you don't have to run out. You can just stay put. That's the safest thing to do. And if on your co if you're on the coast in a flood zone, you got to have a an evacuation plan. uh forecast hurricane outlook. This is from Noah.

[00:06:50]They're forecasting 8 to 14 named storms. Average is 14. So the forecast basically is for a slightly below average season.

[00:07:01]And it's basically the same from Colorado State University. We had 13 storms last year. Average is 14.

[00:07:08]Forecasting 13. So you may have heard we're have this we're going to have this big El Nino and we're going to have a way below average hurricane season. And maybe that will happen, but it's just because there's a strong El Nino doesn't mean we're going to have a reduced a significantly reduced number of storms.

[00:07:24]It doesn't mean that. It just means over the 125 150 years of data we have, we usually see a reduction in storms. And we'll talk about that right now. So here is the map of sea surface temperature anomaly. what this is doing and not looking at actual temperature, but saying, "Hey, temperatures over here in the Caribbe, the Gulf are a little bit warmer than normal." They're warm. They're definitely warmer than normal. And there's some red in here where we're starting to get moderately warmer than normal, but over here on the Pacific side, it's way above normal. You can see how dark red it is. And let's just zoom into the the El Nino zone. So, this is this is the budding El Nino right here. You see the warm water uh just sitting here and then expanding out here into the what is the east Pacific, the East Pack.

[00:08:18]We're already significantly above normal. We're forecast to go several degrees warmer than this for a strong El Nino.

[00:08:28]That's that's the basic story of El Nino. A it's an unusual warming of the East Pacific and it it stops the upwelling of cold water from off the coast of South America. You don't get the upwelling of cold water. The warm water just builds and builds and builds.

[00:08:46]It sits on top and that creates an area of of low pressure and it invigorates the jetream.

[00:08:53]And let me show you all the mechanics here with El Nino. So El Nino. So here's the equator.

[00:09:00]In a normal year, trade winds, the easterlys blow from east to west.

[00:09:06]And what they do is they blow from east to west is they blow the water that's warming at the surface from the heat of the sun and they'll blow it. They'll blow that warm water. They blow it west.

[00:09:19]Trade winds are blowing across the water.

[00:09:24]They push that surface water to the west and the warm water goes west. And when you remove that upper layer of warm water, you get a little convection and the cold water comes up off the east coast of up the west coast of South America. That's a normal year.

[00:09:42]When there's an El Nino, those trade winds weaken or they don't blow at all.

[00:09:46]And so instead of that warm water being pushed way off into Indonesia, it just sits here off the west coast of South America and it just builds. So you get this big heat sink and that warm water is heat energy and that impacts the currents that are flowing above with the mid and upper level winds. Here's just a little snapshot of what an El Nino looks like.

[00:10:10]uh NASA uh from one of their uh global polar orbiting satellites.

[00:10:16]There's the warming in the 1997 El Nino.

[00:10:19]1997 El Nino was one of the strongest on records. In fact, I think it I think it's the strongest we've ever measured.

[00:10:26]That was a big one. Uh if you if you lived on the coast of California during 1997, they just had they just got hammered with storm after storm during the winter months when that Elinia was active. It was amazing. Um, a lot of erosion, a lot of homes were damaged from all of the incredible uh onshore storminess that was pushing up against the west coast. And they had just a ton of snow in the Sierras and the Rocky Mountains. And then in 2015, you know, this is what the El Nino looked like here. Not as strong.

[00:10:58]Each El Nino has its own flavor. What we think is going to happen, what the forecast is for this summer and falls El Nino is that it is going to surpass the strong one in 1997 in intensity.

[00:11:12]Um, you know, that that basically it's going to energize the jetream across uh the United States and this can lead to heavy snows in the in the Cascades and the Sierras and the Rockies uh in wintertime.

[00:11:29]But in the summer months as it's increasing the upper level wind flow, uh it can reduce the storm count because it it strengthens the jetream across the eastern across the the the western Pacific.

[00:11:45]It strengthens the jetream. So what is that? So the mid and upper level winds are stronger in an El Nino. Why is that important? Well, when you've got a developing storm or you have a developed storm, it's stacked vertically. A healthy hurricane is stacked vertically.

[00:11:59]When you look at it from satellite from up above, you can look right down and see that little blue dot. That's the surface. That's the eye of the storm because it's perfectly vertically stacked. Like it's like looking down a um a tube of paper towels. You just look right down it vertically stacked. That allows the storm to develop, wind up, get very organized, and those can become your major hurricanes. But when you've got wind blowing across the middle and upper levels, it tilts everything and that disrupts the circulation very quickly and that can it can literally destroy weaken or destroy established storms or it can prevent a storm from developing in the first place. That's why it matters. It can reduce the storm count.

[00:12:47]Doesn't mean it's not like flipping a switch. doesn't mean we're going to have a much lower count, but it can lead to fewer storms.

[00:12:55]So, that's thrown into the stats on trying to figure out how many storms we're going to have, where they're going to form, where they're going to go is a mystery. We don't know that. So, let's look at the models for the next couple of days. And what I'm looking for is for any I've got a couple of models running here. I've got our in-house graph. This is the Euro and the GFS.

[00:13:16]So, I got three models, one in white, one in black, one in yellow. And what you'll notice is today, nothing of any organization over the Gulf, the Caribbe, or the open Atlantic. What I'd be looking for would be some isobars stacking up indicating developing low pressure anywhere. And I'll run this forward for a couple of days. And Thursday, we got a couple of storms across the North Atlantic.

[00:13:41]Nothing in the development region or the Caribbean or the Gulf on the models. A lot of activity across the mountain west, but nothing tropical showing up on the models.

[00:13:55]Uh so we're quiet out here. It looks like there's a lot of storminess, but you can see already when we're looking at the satellite uh across the Gulf, look at how the high level clouds are all pushing off to the north and east.

[00:14:07]What is that? Look at that. Well, that's windshare. So if a storm was trying to develop out here, it would encounter mid and upper level shear and it would be difficult for it to form. That's that's what an El Nino year looks like. Now, here's the thing about this. So even though the water's warming out there right now, right now officially we're not in an El Nino yet. It hasn't gotten warm enough to be declared an El Nino, but it is warming. We're neutral right now. and and looking at Noah's update on it, they really think that in the next month we could flip into El Nino. It could get warm enough to be declared an El Nino and then it would strengthen and stay that way through the winter. That's an interesting forecast. A strong Elinia through the winter has a lot of ramifications for heavy snowfall in the Mountain West over the winter. Back to the tropics. No tropical development expected over the next seven days. That from the hurricane center. And that is where we will leave it tonight. That's what's going on out there. Uh we'll see you tomorrow on every night at 9 to update you on the tropical picture.

[00:15:10]Until then, we are live at 10 o'clock on KO1 News at 10. We'll see you then.