I've mentioned a couple of times during the past week that early season tropical development appears possible in the Atlantic Basin. A good part of the reasoning for this is a "pulse of upward motion" heading east across the equatorial Pacific. The technical name for this pulse is the Madden/Julian Oscillation (MJO) & this major pulse is now headed into the East Pacific. And just like that, we have low pressure off the coast of Central America in the East Pacific as well as plenty of moisture & convection in the Southwest Caribbean.
The National Hurricane Center is monitoring both of these areas for possible tropical development. Check out their new genesis forecast map which indicates a "greater than 50%" potential for development.
Long range forecast models have been latching onto this area of "upward motion" for some time now & trying to develop tropical systems in or near the Caribbean. The problem is there's no consensus on where the storms might track -- such inconsistency is true not only from model to model but also different model runs within the same model. So the models seem to be picking up on the overall upward motion moving eastward but -- as usual -- the details are very fuzzy.
In any case, any tropical development will likely be a slow process. In fact, the most impressive area of low pressure in the extreme East Pacific will be over the land of Central America fairly soon.
Last but not least...this MJO might help spread tropical moisture & "atmospheric lift" northward into Florida next week. If so, we'd see better coverage of showers & thunderstorms.
Photos still coming in from the Iowa tornadoes. Here's a link to some aerial damage photos (thanks for sending, Dad!). The next several days will feature more severe weather in the midwest through the Ohio Valley. That'll add to the already record-setting tornado yr. we're enduring. Jan.-May had the greatest number of U.S. tornadoes in modern history.
More info. here at "LiveScience".....graphics/data from the Storm Prediction Center here.
