UPDATE 11 PM .......50MPH ....Was a Day of WATCHING & BRET Pulling It Together Again............. (Thoughts on a Day We Will Watch & Wait to See What Bret Might Do.) Recon Eventually Will Give Us Better Data

11 PM

Barbados, Dominica, Martinique, and St. Lucia,

Watches have been posted!

Stormpulse is good to follow!

50 MPH.

Been one amazingly long day.

Bret came back....

...looked bad last last night.

Looked messy this morning.

And then...........

OMG

Bret is RED again.

Long story short.... often times when waves are riding low and close together the lead wave attaches a sort of gas line to the wave behind it... literally sucks it dry, gains fuel and makes a come back while the second system has to fight to stay alive or fade away. This evening Invest 93L found some red color again and looks to be past life support. See the image below, Bret was falling apart (or looked like it) while 93L had the Mojo.... 

What did Bret do....

...see the linkage and suddenly.

93L looked mighty paltry

And the energy, the mojo brought Bret alive.

This happens often in the tropics on the ITCZ

hurricanes are all about transference of energy.

Shear let up a little, that helped as well and now Bret is moving Westbound at 17 MPH packing 50 MPH winds and if we can get recon or the ASCAT to make a pass over Bret we might get some better info. 

Today hit me as a hard day initially as the calendar reminded me that an old friend who passed away in 2007 ...well would have been his birthday today and that made me think too much. Then I cleaned the entire house while watching loops of Bret trying to bounce back and wondering if 93L was going to make it and long story short it felt good to do things I'd been putting off. And, good to have friends online that make me laugh, giggle and sing. Takes a tropical village sometimes... So thanks you know who you are ... 

Live, Love, Flourish

(it's an eye shadow palette lol)

Good advice.

Do what you love.

I love researching, tracking, chasing weather.

Tropical or Snow... 

Check back tomorrow.

For the Saga of Bret and his friend 93L

Africa........

* * * 

Keep reading if you want to...

...it explains what needed to happen today.

There's always tomorrow....

...not singing Annie but you know how the song goes!

Noon 

Main take away here is that the track has been nudged further South and there is now a big question mark as to whether Bret stays a Tropical Storm or makes it to Hurricane Intensity. The discussion mentions many of the factors that I have and again it's noteworthy that there is dry air entrained and the presentation on satellite imagery is problematic, tho totally normal for a tropical stystem at this latitude at this time of year trying to become a hurricane before the Islands. Recon will go in as soon as it can, we will get better data then but til now the brakes have been put on the model discussion of it turning up into the Atlantic (because it's weak not strong, small not large as noted previously in the blog) and now it has sped up back to it's preferred cruising speed of West at 21 MPH forward speed. That means its circulation often outruns its convection making it hard to intensify and sometimes it becomes tilted in structure. It's extremely common for a system under a strong high to move fast, and fast forward speed usually inhibits development. More later. Keep reading if you have not as the information in the blog below written this morning explains why expectations and track have been lowered by the NHC as seen in the image above.

That also means the Middle Islands are more in the way of danger though until we get more data and we see what Bret does it's important for all the islands to pay attention. Using the chart from the NHC that is made for this sort of discussion. Again, nothing is carved in stone and no watches or warnings are up yet, though that may change later on today or tonight.

***

Bret found some convection last night, but did it get it from Invest 93L I'm wondering. Dotted lighter blue shows dry air and dust to the North... not the best signature but it's a rare 40 MPH TS far out still in the MDR headed towards the Islands. Cone shown below, because it's not all about the Cone and we have a long way to go still. You can see the dust aka SAL on the image below better!

There are some things to note here in the image above. First of all, Bret is still quite the distance from the Islands riding along low, moving West at a slower speed than yesterday while Invest 93L a larger wave is connected in long layers of clouds to Bret as often happens when we see two systems close together in the Atlantic this time of year.

There are so many things going against Bret, from the beginning, to be a TS and that's why it is still a minimal Tropical Storm with 40 MPH winds and a barometric pressure that has hovered there around 1008.  On one hand it is there and it's got a fairly well developed center and spin to it, it has problems holding onto it's intense convection and intensity noticable on Dvorak that measures many things and is very helpful without dropsonde data from Recon.  Why hasn't Recon gone in you may wonder? Because it's too far away, has to get closer and until then we use other instruments available to make guesstimates as to it's strength and structure. Think of it like a drone, how many chasers and photographers use drone footage these days both before and after a storm makes landfall? You can see infinitly more from drone footage then you can a picture by one person on the ground at any given spot. 

Red/orange/gold shows a dry dusty environment.

Note Bret and it's friend 93L slide along to the S.

This is typical of this time of year and yes SAL hasn't been "that bad" this year yet, however it is there and it's taking it's chipping away at Bret's potential to grow and utilize the warmth of the water it's swimming in westbound. Note it has a smaller "envelope" of moisture than the less developed Invest behind it; a smaller storm can spin up faster and at the same time fall apart faster than a larger storm. It also takes way longer for a large wave/Invest to pull itself together and yet IF it does, if the center aligns vertically it would in theory have more of an ability to go the distance and fight off the shear. 

A lot of IFS in that statement. Below isn an image Jim Williams of Hurricane City put up that tells the story of the battle that Bret is fighting. The reason it's rare to see named tropical systems here in June is they have to fight off some dry air from SAL and in addition they have to fight off shear. If they don't wrap up and intensify before the Islands, it's very hard to do so in the East Caribbean. Red is SHEAR... a NO signal and green is more supportive as in Go vs No. Bret is headed into Shear and yes so will 93L as well. However, Bret has done a nice job taking a bite out of the SAL and that sometimes helps the 2nd system behind the first one, not always is it enough but it's a factor we see sometimes when the ability of the latter system to surive and later thrive.  

Does it have a chance? Sure it has a chance. Though a look at tropical weather history shows us that most early storms that were analog storms to Bret in June took the South route not the turn to the North that the GFS had been trying to sell us.  Every system at that location where Bret became an Invest took the Southern route, though Elsa waited until she found a chance to pull North more and went the distance, most die in the old graveyeard of the Caribbean.  Note we have had two different Tropical Storms named Bret in the same area taking the same track, the one on the left shown below is Bret 1993 the B storm in August but it did manage to make it to Central America and a second landfall after skimming along the South American coast. The image on the right is Bret in June of 2017 and you're notice it didn't live very long and it also took that low route into the Carib. In some years though the only chance a system has to try and continue westbound is to crawl along the North coast of South America, it's hard to explain but sometimes it helps. Either way it's a hard road to travel, kind of like starting the Appalachian Trail in early March because the weather seemed warm enough and yet it was a bit too early; there's a time and a place for everything from planting tomatoes in the Carolinas to starting a hike along the Appalachian Trail. Just being honest, not trying to burst anyone's bubble.

So far the wind history for Bret is below.

Models for Bret are below.

Note they are trending now more westbound ish.

That is more in line with the reality of CLIMO.

More agreement today than yesterday!

Time will tell.

As for Invest 93L.

We are at 70% in 2 day and 80% in the 7 day.

Models for 93L shown below.

Let's just wait and see on that one...

Models from Tropical Tidbits...

...shown on Mike's Spaghetti Models.

Again the want to pull N... 

...note intensity is on the low side.

Time will tell.

Until then we loop and watch ...

...something we rarely get to do in June!

Especially in THAT part of the basin.

This is why few storms form or go where Bret has... 

... it's just not a friendly environment.

Warm ocean but dry atmosphere.

Area off the Carolinas is favorable.

Has a purple splotch.

EPAC is favorable.

But in any given year... MDR produces!

Vorticity chart shows an area in Carolinas now..

...has a slim chance once it splashes down into ATL

...adding fuel to what's already there!

And you can see Bret and it's friend 93L

Check back later today for any updates.

1. The fact that Bret exists shows it's a fighter and has a good overal center.

2. Remember Dry Air is there inhibiting it's development.

3. Shear is there and only gets stronger closer to the East Carib.

4. 93L has potential still.

5. Never ignore areas close in off Outer Banks in late June.

6. Remember that IF it begins to fall apart ... it can come back to life in friendlier waters.

Extra Credit: Please make a Hurricane Plan now as we have only just begun and we have a ways to go before El Nino shuts down any one area even though it's there, it usually shows it's strength in Fall and Winter. 

Sweet Tropical Deams,

BobbiStorm

@bobbistorm on Twitter and Instagram