NHC Says Quiet. Purple Splotch Up on a Westbound Wave. MJO About to Flip. Tropics Should Heat Up Soon. August Getting Closer Every Day. Only a Matter of Time.

NHC says nothing for 5 days.

As there are no yellow circles on the NHC page, I like to bring you the Purple Splotch page which to me is more reliable at times. For example, the whole entire time the NHC had the yellow thing hoisted in the Northern Gulf of Mexico there was never a purple splotch there and note it never developed!  If it's going to have chances, it shows up in purple (usually) before the yellow circle appears.  Speaking of tropical waves and purple splotches, here's the purple wave below. Looks a bit like some 1960s Martian Spaceship on a cartoon show.

I'm not making this up.

Anyway it's something to watch.

Stalled out front ...top middle.

Off Miami coast moisture trapped in the ULL.

This is an ULL not a hurricane.

But they have similar structures.

I love to call them Ghost Canes!

Upper Level Lows carry with them a myriad of weather possibilities, there is a dry side, a "dirty" wet side where moisture from old waves sometimes gets caught up in their ghostlike circulation. On rare occaisions, that trapped moisture caught in it's circulation can work it's way down in the atmosphere, the ULL fills in and a low end tropical system tries to form. Usually, they just do their thing and this one has come a long way from the middle of the Atlantic. It traveled quite a distance and I knew it would probably be about where I would be on a planned trip from NC to Florida for a family event. Summer somehow always brings family events, weddings and birthday parties and various other occasions that have yet to happen. 

So what's with the Upper Level Low tracking? If you are a newbie here, and you probably aren't, it's worth remembering that ULLs can tear up a budding tropical storm as the shear can rip them apart inhibiting them from really getting going. On the other hand, if a traveling ULL moves into the right position rather than rip it apart it can really enhance the convection and help a tropical wave develop faster into a tropical storm or hurricane.  Either kills it or enhances it and everything depends on the location of the ULL to the tropical wave. Remember that down the road when we actually have a tropical wave worth talking about.

In this case, as this huge ULL swirled across the Atlantic it managed to pick up some moisture that became trapped inside it (mostly on the right side) and that added moisture will connect with a front stalled out across Florida enhancing the precipitation and amping up the atmosphere where more severe storms will form in various places. Sounds nebulous, but it's one of those things that evolves in real time. There's nothing there on your radar, it looks sunny and then suddenly you hear a crack of thunder and think "where the hell did that come from" and a few minutes later you see where the hell that came from. Mike, near Tampa, had something like this happen to him the other day and he spoke about it in his morning broadcast. 

Yesterday traveling Southbound on I-95 that semi dead front came to life in magical, meteorological ways and we had nonstop lightning, hail and a crazy long wall cloud for a wild line of storms near Savannah. 

When the "yellow thing" was trying to form in the Northern Gulf of Mexico, there was a small Upper Level Low in the GOM that created interference for the wanna be low and yet amped up the atmosphere on the West Florida Coast like crazy. Storm chasers hit the road, wild storms formed and yet the Northern Gulf Coast basically got normal summer rain.

Another point here is that often tropical storms and hurricanes follow the same track that Upper Level Lows have traveled before them. Also, as Saharan Dust makes its way West across the Atlantic if you plot out the movment of the dust and the locations impacted you will notice over the next month or two the early hurricanes tend to trace those same tracks of both the Upper Level Lows and where the Saharan Dust goes. I say this from watching them both over time. At some point something changes and the strong High collapses some and there's a path way for a Fish Storm vs an "oh my God it's gonna wipe out the whole East Coast" sort of Cone. To everything there is a season and the season currently is shaped by the very strong high that will keep propelling SAL and tropical waves westbound across the currently quiet tropical Atlantic.

Orange snf Red is Saharan Dust.

Wave in center of Atlantic bit a bite out of the dust.

That ULL is to the West of the edge of SAL.

Each wave takes another bite out of the Saharan Dust and wave by wave by wave the SAL lessens and the waves get stronger. The water gets warmer day by day and eventually provides an edge to the wave that allows it to develop a bit more, rather than fall apart chocked off by the SAL that strangles it some. There's a rumor going round that the cavalry is coming as the MJO is about to flip!

There are positive conditions and negative conditions in July in the tropics, it's a mathematical equation for possible development or a busted forecast. Soon, the MJO will move into this region and SAL will lighten up it's dusty load and a tropical wave will have higher than average chances of development.

Then we will get better yellow circles and deeper purple splotches and finally we will get something going. There are definitely waves, waiting to travel Westbound over Africa. Tropics may not be active, but the storms over Florida today will feel very tropical!

Stay tuned.

Besos BobbiStorm

Sweet Tropical Dreams,

@bobbistorm on Twitter and Instagram

On Twitter mostly weather and on Instagram whatever.

Enjoy.... and to be honest when I was a kid they didn't call it SAL they called it various names such as African RED Dust or Red Saharan Dust which made it sound like dust from Mars or some far away place was messing up our Miami air and a few times it was so bad my father's white impala was covered with Reddish Orange Dust the way a Chevy Spark in Raleigh turns yellow when the pollen pops. Saharan Dust so thick you could write your name on your father's car when he wasn't looking!

Mike was listing old TV shows he loved yesterday.

So I guess it got stuck in my head!