A writer and a tropical muse. A funky Lubavitcher who enjoys watching the weather, hurricanes, listening to music while enjoying life with a sense of humor and trying to make sense of it all!
Wednesday, July 08, 2026
Blobs & Convection in Atlantic Today. BAVI Stealing the Show in Pacific! El Nino & Hurricane Season. July Climbs the Mtn to August.... Do Models Dream?
Note the end is wedged in the beginning here today.
Areas of blobs and current convection
Hard to find inspiration in early July when SAL is in charge and El Nino is building it's case for being one for the history books. I don't like to "hype" as much as tell it like it is and in truth there are possibilities but they are low chances barely worth mentioning. Then again, the pattern has shifted and we are no longer in the dead heat of the Heat Dome in the Carolinas back to a normal Carolina Summer pattern meaning it's not so horrible at night with a light breeze ... perfect for going out and having a drink on a rooftop bar. In the morning it's a drop moderate but warms up all day fast and by late afternoon the clouds build up and they let loose with some thunder and lightning and awesome drenching rains. Ps...every Summer trip to the beach ends with late day thunderheads chasing the masses away.
When a pattern flips, that's a sign. But what is it really a sign of ???
Shows we are moving up the graphic for Hurricane Season, where little peaks of historic action happen on their way to moving on up the range of possibilities into August. Generally in an El Nino Season August is the start of action. SAL generally .... wanes and stronger waves are able to maintain motion and their existence to take advantage of any weak chance that something could form and at least get a yellow circle going. Note the red moves UP fast as if waves need to be mountain climbers!!
As for El Nino... ...a good primer in why El Nino impacts our Hurricane Season with info vs hype.
Click on that as it's good discussion.
With good graphics.
Mike LIVE this morning.... ...always easier typing listening to Mike talk.
Old habit...............
Mike explaining why not to pay too much attn... ....to this graphic.
Models have been wonky.... ..over excited over next to nothing.
Does show areas likely to develop.... ....if they could.
Another screenshot from Mike & X
As I said the rains have returned!
Sadly it's hot hot hot out West.
Colorado to Montana... crazy heat.
And BAVI is the star of the show today.
Reed Timmer out there chasing.
Intensifying, an eye you can fall into...
IF you zoom in there.... ...you can see the eye wall stacked.
That's the main story today.
That and the pattern flip....
Last but not least.
There's a BLOB in the BOC
Hard to ignore.
Mike sees blobs everywhere...
...really lol but seriously
We have all been watching it quietly.
In any normal year...
...this would be a candidate for a name.
Low level fame, weak BOC system.
Or maybe get into the Gulf
Check that blob out...bright red!
Also a nice low lat wave train.
And a candidate for Subtropical thoughts....
...I really don't want to dream on subtropicals.
But in an El Nino Summer you got Slim Pickens!
Suddenly Slim looks cute lol....
Models are machines.
They are told to "fetch" a hurricane.
They dream... Yes models dream... Bobbi does not.
Does NOAA dream?
Maybe so...
Okay I may dream on snow and cold fronts.
But check out those little red Ls
Especially in the Gulf close in...
Mid July
Far down the tropical road still.
Or off the coast of Carolina.
Areas from the Gulf to the Cape OBX
on both sides of Florida need watching
in El Nino years
Have a great day!!
Sweet Dreams
BobbiStorm
Looking back.... ..as someone who lived in LA in the 80s
I think ppl were more crazy then than the 60s 80s I'm sure more fun than the 60s...
I'd say what was everyone on ... ..but I kind of know ;)
I was high on LA with dreams of Lemon Meringue Pie
BAVI all the Rage and Raging Towards Landfall. Where Did All The Chasers Go? July 4th Weekend Offline Watching Fire Works! Atlantic Quietish.... Low Lat Wave Train Keeps on Training ... Weather Pattern in the NC Broken So Are Changes in the Wind?
On the other side of the world, far from the Fifa World Cup the weather world is watching Typhoon BAVI and to be fair iCyclone is on the way as is Reed Timmer and a whole slew of chasers who are not waiting around for the Atlantic to wake up and wish to chase cyclonic history! BAVI center stage on Tropical Tidbits!
In the Atlantic Ocean.
Go straight to the source!
There's a low latitude wave train....
....cruising towards Trinidad
Ah look the Big Kahuna.....
...my weather artist and song of the day pal!
@daBuh played with my ink blot.
Couldn't tell if it was a hunting dog pointing..
...or
...the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg of Gatsby fame!
My friend is right....
...fated love always wins at the box office.
Just some literary references ....
...from my English degree :)
In my own ocean.....
...chasing hearts of potential!
Close in is good to watch.....
...or Upper Level Lows that go Subtropical.
Who knows.
Won't lie this made me smile
With dreams of Winter in July.
I took a long July 4th vacation and tried to ignore the triple digit heat in the Carolinas. 105 sounds like a Radio Station I used to listen to not the daily temperatures in July in Raleigh and I do NOT want to talk about the "feels like" I am so over "feels like 150 degrees in Hell" weather reports. I sort of ignored BAVI to the chagrin of some of my close weather friends. Sorry, it's on the other side of the world and not raining on me. I needed rain. I got rain last night. I had hours of rain and I had lighting and thunder for a good six hours from start til finish, or until I fell asleep listening to the rain and grumbling, distant thunder as the storm left us and rolled out to sea. I will say the pattern has been broken. The storm complex that blew through the East Coast from NC to VA to DC and up into NY & NJ charged aross the area lighting up the sky, causing flooding and BJ's roof collapse that put their flooded store all over the media. The grip of the strong High over the South is losing it's grip and there's a shift in the triple digit heat as it's on it's way to Billings, Montana! I'm glad to see it go though my friend in Bozeman may get what she wished for as the snow season usually there is long and summer is short.
That's not France!
That's DC.
250 Birthday!
I spent July 4th relaxing and in the evening watched the longest, firework show I remember the Country Club giving and stared at my phone smiling as my kids in South Florida sent me fireworks from Hard Rock's famous guitar and some resort up the coast. My son Levi sent me pics my own Biltmore Hotel on the lawn watching fireworks with castles in the air made by drones and that made me smile knowing my grandchildren are enjoying the good life back home in Coral Gables on the lawn of the beautiful Biltmore. Not the one in North Carolina ;)
Watched the Tall Ships my mother loved so ..... sail through the harbor in New York City. My brother kept texting me like a terrier that learned how to text telling me to "put on MACYS" and "OMG did you see the Tall Ships" and "when are they going to show the fireworks already" and then "OMG" lol all night. He gets excited about things like this you know. I had some incredible BBQ Pulled Brisket my husband made while sipping an ice-cold beer as I sat on the floor in the living room in front of the big screen cross legged like a li'l kid watching the fireworks that finally went off in DC close to Midnight. It was a hot, meaningful July 4th and one for the record books both weather wise and history wise. Seeing as how I love weather and history, it was a perfect combination.
I ignored the news, I ignored the nonstop hype on the high record heat and I ignored BAVI's evolution into a historic storm and time will tell where it goes next. Sometimes you just need to get away, off the flowing social media highway, the nonstop feed of hype and agenda on the "NEWS" and hunker down through the triple digit heat and do your own thing and then sit back and watch the fireworks in the hot, steamy night on July 4th in Raleigh. Next month up is August and then comes Remember September and as El Nino seasons usually ends early any real activity should come in August and early September. But as always time will tell.
Yup, I sat on the floor singing along to Sweet Caroline as if I was at a Red Sox game and well for those few minutes life couldn't get much better :)
If you look closely at the two huge Highs shown by the 2 pretty Hs and the monsoon trof, it looks like the High Pressure in the Atlantic has a cheshire grin. Perhaps it knows something. Perhaps it's just annoying and thinks it'll live forever. It won't. But for now it's totally in charge of the Atlantic and it's July so its partner in crime the Saharan Dust is sucking all the moisture out of the atmopshere.
Atlantic Quiet. EPAC Heating Up. Heat is the Word of the Summer of 2026. Heat Wave. Heat Dome. Baked Alaska Sounds Good Bout Now...
I'm going to be honest and short here as there is not much to say. This is a tale of two basins today and the Atlantic is quiet, and the EPAC is not. Normally this is the time for the EPAC as it's season begins earlier and there is more to work with in most years. More moisture specifically. Shear at the entrance to the Carib that you can see in that SW to NE angled line of clouds near the coast of South America will shut down most anything that tries to form. SAL is in charge of the Atlantic and July is it's month to party! The EPAC also gets an extra boost from our building El Nino! So this is a good time to enjoy July 4th or go on a cruise as you should luck out and avoid named storms. That doesn't mean something can not try and spin up close in as that is possible. The rainfall signature for Florida and parts of the South is intense over the next week. But the chance of seeing Bertha is very low.
'
Rain would be wonderful Rain would be really wonderful in the Carolinas and other places that have been baking in the triple digit heat. Worth remembering a strong Heat Wave kills more people ....ironically.......than most Hurricanes. Heat takes it's toll, it's a silent killer. It kills crops as well and impacts the prices and availability of basic produce at the market. We don't name Heat Waves, though this one will be remembered as July 4th Heat Wave of 2026.
I'm not going to post on how hot it is as to be honest, I don't want to hear about it and I can't imagine you want to hear about it either. The Heat is exhausting enough I don't want to open up emails and look at posts with everyone trying their hand at making AI pics in dark, hot shades of red, crimson and the favorite fire orange. We all know it's hot. It's July. El Nino is prone to heat ridges and heat domes and triple digit temperatures in places that usually are happy to have warm summer beach weather. This year even the beaches are hot.
So I'll get back to y'all when I have something interesting about the tropics to discuss. As always at times such as these keep an eye on the backdoor as areas closer in and more likely to develop. It's early July, it's wait and watch time in the Atlantic Basin.
Does a Piece of Energy From THE FRONT Get Trapped Near the Coast? Maybe, Small Possibility. Thoughts on "The Blob" N of PR. And High Pressure On the Move....For July 4th!!! Gonna Be a Hot One!
Why the odd look for this area of interest with the 10% X on the edge of the yellow circle? Simple, its in the process of fully coming off the coast of NC as the front plops into the water near the Gulfstream and the models see some possible development. The circle is the area of formation where IF it forms it could form. The general set up weather wise is that a strong, heat dome sets up over the Carolinas, VA, DC (basically the East Coast) and it gets nudged to the South as it's drifting out to sea.... the High expands and shoves it back a bit towards parts of the Florida coast.
Now that is the set up. If you were a screenwriter these notes would be on a board with ideas, many ideas for various scenes. It's currently more a tropical dream, or even a subtropical dream and with the "feels like" temperatures flirting with 109 degrees often it's totally understandable that the EURO and everyone else is now dreaming of a tropical system that would cool us all off and provide our farms some much needed rain. Do models dream? Good question. Well we know the GFS dreams so perhaps now the EURO is dreaming with higher chances than the NHC is conservatively giving it.
Water vapor, Ye Olde black & white one...
...always awesome for sniffing out energy.
The front was fun!
Strong, heavy rain.
Needed rain.
Cooler temperatures!
Cooler meaning barely 90 today ...
...vs 98 degrees.
Currently we see where weather is flaring up.
In this 5 day map below...
..note the placement of the High.
It's like that relative who came for dinner....
...stayed over night.
Has not left 3 days later.
It's that guy at the Chinese Buffet...
... piling his food high up on his plate.
Takes that "all you can eat" sign seriously!
The High is hungry.
The high wants to expand......
...way beyond Bermuda.
It's moving to Florida!
Maybe visit Texas (j/k)
Now let's talk about the blob.
The blob everyone is asking about.
On Mike's Weather Page...
...it's SCREAMS "look at me!!"
Beware of the blob!
Note the long frontalboundary
Part drifts off... part lingers near the coast.
There is the blob below. It's mixing it up with an ULL ULL tickles it and sparks convection.
This is why it's so bright and blobby.
That's an inside joke but in a mood.
Seriously tho the MIMIC shows the story.
1. Note the front in orange that has moved off the Carolina Coast.
2. Next note part of it is moving out to sea (to the right) 3. Now note part of it is lingering near the coast. (yes saying "note" too much)
4. See the blue (dry air high pressure) pressing down on the top of the orange?
5. See the wave train stretched low from Africa to South America.
6. Blob is less visible here & part of that energy is being sucked off into the flow to it's North.
7. Obviously some of the wave moves West with that flow into the Carib.. maybe EPAC.
8. The Bermuda High moves West towards Florida.
9. Pushes any remnant moisture of the front into Florida. The Carolinas bake with record heat.
That's really the whole story....
Yes there's a chance.
Heck according to the EURO (once King) there is a big chance.
AI models backed off on it... will see what the next few runs show.
We will see what really happens in real time.
So was we say in Carolina: "Whatchy'all doin for July 4th??"
Being American and being this year's set up we basically are all celebrating the whole week I suppose as many are taking long vacations I have noticed. (I said noticed, not note)
Stay aware of the weather at the beaches and the rip currents and thunder may roar as temperatures climb, depending on your location.
20% Yellow Circle Off the SE Coast. Caribbean Earthquakes Keep Happening. Could it Be 106 Degrees in DC on July 4th? Stay Cool... Pray for Rain.
So the possible development.... ...at the tail end of the front is official.
Not officially happening.
But not just speculation.
This is really a very classic set up. It can happen early in El Nino years where we see close in development along the SE Coast in this area known as the Georgia Bight. It's that little cove like space between the Carolinas, Georiga and Northern Florida that invites development early in the season. Could happen. I can't rule it out. For now some models favor it and others barely see it. So we are going to watch.
Note using the word "cold front" is really a misnomer, but the temperatures moderate for a day or two and hang high in the 80s vs high in the 90s or worse in the triple digits. Below is the "weather map" for Monday. I do so love maps. Current modeling shows it possibly forming and backing up ...retrograding West into one of those lucky areas along the coast. North Florida/Georgia/SC should watch the possibilities as they evolve over the weekend. Some welcome rain to moderate the temperatures would be awesome.
And, I just want to mention that while we are expecting a quiet hurricane season in the Caribbean, if all goes as planned during this El Nino, know that things are not all that quiet currently geologically. Heartbreaking killer earthquakes in Venezuela with a current death toll of 1,430 people and close to 68,000 missing. That death toll figure is sadly changes rapidly. Some are honestly dead missing in the rubble and many are unable to contact anyone, seperated from family and friends. It's not just buildings that collapsed it is the whole infrastruture. Nothing is normal there as you can imagine and some are simply missing and others are dead. The earthquake happened around 6 PM. Many people were home, many may have been out shopping on the way home or eating dinner.... really horrible. But in general Caribbean plates are active currently.
That's it. Will update later on Sunday.
Stay cool, let's hope for the best and not the worst for high temperatures on July 4th across a good part of the USA. The EURO models for July 4th is below. 106 degrees forecast for Washington DC! Also note out West there are high fire dangers and fireworks are restricted in those areas. Seriously pray for rain.
Earthquakes. Heat Dome. Saharan Dust. Tropics Quiet Aside From Geologically..........
While there is still chatter about the small chance of something trying to spin up close in off the Florida coast, there really is not much to talk about. The Atlantic is dealing with SAL and the water there is not prime time for development. Late June is usually a snooze fest, unless some random wave tries and go the distance. Above you see a huge High ...a double barrel high pressure zone across the Southeast. Currently, unless something changes there's talk it could be close to 105 degrees a next week. Happy 4th of July if you like really hot weather! I do not. I am not a happy camper. I'm a Fall and Winter person personally.
EURO says 102 degrees next Friday
106 degrees in Raleigh as per GFS.
Good old GFS
Shows DC with 102 on July 4th.
Never saw a forecast it couldn't hype.
There's really not much to say other than when a heat dome clamps down on the South sometimes something can try and form beneath it and that is what long range models are fantasizing on. I'm just telling it like it is..
Have a good weekend! Perhaps Sunday I'll be in the mood to write a longer blog looking at blobs and SAL and what could happen in July.
The quake in Venezuela is really terrible. The quakeS are terrible. Just no words. The images remind me very much of Champlain Tower South where I once ran the office years back and where I have close friends living ...who died in the collapsed tower. Just being honest, this is my online weather diary, so yeah it's been hard to watch the coverage.
What is freaky is it was exactly five years ago when the condo built to withstand a Category 5 collapsed killing 98 people.
5 years later to the day.
How freaky is that?
I can't talk about it.
So not watching too much coverage.
Tho I do love geology, it's fascinating.
So between El Nino, SAL, Heat Domes and multiple earthquakes in the Caribbean there's lots to talk about but nothing too tropical. But never say never.
Besos BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on X
Brings to mind this song... ....this video from a Broadway play. Made into a movie.
Location: Miami, Raleigh, Crown Heights, Florida, United States
Weather Historian. Studied meteorology and geography at FIU. Been quoted in Wall Street Journal, Washington Post & everywhere else... Lecturer, stormchaser, writer, dancer. If it's tropical it's topical ... covering the weather & musing on life. Follow me on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/#!/BobbiStorm
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