Hurricane center ups odds for next tropical system in Atlantic
The National Hurricane Center has increased odds a tropical wave in the Atlantic could become the busy season’s next tropical depression or storm.
The system that emerged off the lower latitudes of the west of coast of Africa has been producing a large area of disorganized showers and thunderstorms.
“Environmental conditions appear conducive for gradual development, and a tropical depression is likely to form by the early to middle part of next week while it moves westward to west-northwestward across the eastern tropical Atlantic,” forecasters said.
The NHC gives it a 20% chance to develop in the next two days and 70% in the next seven.
If it spins up into named-storm strength, it could become Tropical Storm Sean.
Friday saw the end of Tropical Storm Philippe that turned extratropical as it sped toward the Bahamas, and the system is still expected to bring high winds and rain to New England and Atlantic Canada this weekend.
It hung on as a tropical storm for 13 days outliving Tropical Storm Rina that petered out last weekend.
The 2023 Atlantic hurricane season has already had 18 official systems including 17 that were named and one unnamed subtropical storm in January. Six of those became hurricanes and four of those were major hurricanes including Hurricane Idalia that struck Florida.
Hurricane expert Philip Klotzbach with Colorado State University said the above average season has seen 87 named storm days so far in 2023, which is well above the annual average of 56 seen across the 30-year span from 1991-2020.
The season officially runs through Nov. 30, and would only need four more named storms to expend the 21-letter list of names assigned by the World Meteorological Organization for the season. Hurricane name lists skip the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z.
After Sean would be Tammy, Vince and Whitney.
Only three hurricane seasons on record have used that many storm named — 2005, 2020 and 2021 — with both 2005’s 28 named storms and 2020’s record 30 exceeding the initial list and having to rely on the Greek alphabet for successive storm names.
Confusion over similarly named storms using that method such as Beta, Eta and Zeta prompted the WMO to shift to an alternate spillover list of storm names for future hurricane seasons.
If 2023’s season ventures past Whitney, it would begin again with the supplemental list starting with Adria.
