June 1st was the official start of the north Atlantic hurricane season, but usually, the season really gets going in the late season. There are a few ways that we can get tropical cyclones to develop out in the Atlantic this time of year, however.

1. They stay in the warmest waters, near the equator or
2. They churn up in the Gulf of Mexico, aided by subtropical forces.

Well, here’s the way it looks tonight, according to the NHC satellite overlay.

Potential Tropical Cyclone 3 is the most immediate threat to the US mainland, and regardless of the associated winds and rotation with it, it will bring the potential for isolated tornadoes and copious rain along the Gulf Coast. Guidance at this point has the center of circulation making landfall within about 100 miles of Lake Charles, Louisiana, with some targeting Houston, and some pointed towards Lafayette. Here is a good average spaghetti plot.

The storm will nearly certainly strengthen, but fortunately, a hurricane is not expected from 3, which will likely end up being Cindy.

The greatest concern with this system is going to be the rainfall, particularly that falling on the eastern flank of the storm. Think places like New Orleans and east towards Pensacola. Flooding rains are likely.

Bret, by every definition, will be a stronger storm. It’s so strong it has no time for a second t. The greatest impact Bret will impart will be to northeastern Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago, all coming as the storm passes overhead within the next few hours.

Despite the early orgnization and  name, Bret will likely not even match 3  in the early stages, at least in terms of intensity.

Bret will continue to move into warmer waters off the Central American coast, and will need to be monitored as June turns towards July.

The Tropics have picked up early this season, however the activity isn’t completely unusual, and hasn’t yet proven to be exceptionally dangerous compared to other weather that has impacted the region in the past. The best thing to do, as always, is to remain vigilant and continue to keep a close eye on the Caribbean.

Hurricane season for the Atlantic basin started a couple weeks ago, and all-in-all, it looked like quiet days were expected. That’s exactly how it’s panned out so far, but it looked like something interesting was getting stirred up around the Yucatan Peninsula! The 00 and 06Z GFS model runs indicated a low pressure system spinning up in the Bay of Campeche in about 6-8 days and meandering its way towards the Texas/Mexico border. Something to keep an eye on!

Then… the 12Z and 18Z model runs came through. Expectations were had! Instead, almost nothing of note is found there anymore. A bit of a surface trough still lingers in the region with clusters of possible convection festering nearby, but nothing like the earlier runs indicating a B-named storm getting spun up. The only area of note is waaaay out in the Atlantic, near the Cape Verde Islands. Usually we don’t get too excited about storms that far out in June/July since the upper level patterns don’t typically favor development that far east. August/September is usually when we gander that far out. But until then, we’ll continue to wait.

A derecho plowed through the northern Plains and western Great Lakes today, taking aim at the Twin Cities metro area. As luck would have it, I had an appointment on the south side of Minneapolis this morning, so as my wife drove from the southern suburbs, I captured a few videos.
First, here we are driving north along I-35W in the south metro, looking at the looming storm to the west. Note the lightning already evident, along with a very ominous shade of green underneath the leading darker clouds. That green hue is owed to ice crystals in the clouds refracting sunlight as it filters through.

As we continue north, the leading gust front passed over us on 35 as we reached the Bloomington area. Keep in mind, as ominous as the clouds were, we actually ended up passing through one of the safer portions of the storm. Significant damage was seen in the north metro, and a copious amount of hail was received in the west metro, but we didn’t see either in our drive.

The storm was closing in! If nothing else, the system brought a whole lot of rain. Here, we continue through south Minneapolis, fully inundated by the storm. Nearly all traffic had pulled to the side of the road, but we pressed on.

The storm was a good example of a long-lived derecho event, starting in South Dakota and running all the way to northern Michigan by the end of the day, leaving a swath of damage along the way. Look at how nasty these videos look, and realize that we didn’t even get the worst of it, for the length of our 15 mile drive. This is the problem with derechoes: They cover a lot of ground and affect a lot more people than a typical supercell or squalls.
Still, it looked pretty cool, right?