With the statistical peak of hurricane season coming on Wednesday, a system that had been moving westward across the Atlantic off Africa was reduced to remnants on Saturday night amid conditions hostile for development.
The disturbance’s weakening was uncommonly quick, especially for this time of the year.
As of Friday’s 8 a.m. outlook, the National Hurricane Center had forecast a 90% chance of development of the system over the next seven days, but as of Saturday at 8 p.m., those chances were “near 0 percent.”
Saturday afternoon, the NHC had written that dry air and wind shear were inhibiting the tropical wave’s development, but added that by next Wednesday or Thursday, it could become a named storm near the northeast Caribbean, according to Alex DaSilva, lead hurricane expert for AccuWeather.
islands or even through the islands, but then it begins to make its turn out to sea.”Any potential impact on the U.S. from this system is still more than 10 days away, DaSilva said, leaving plenty of time for forecasts to change.
“But I think this should be a good wake-up call for people because the tropics are going to get very active here, we believe,” DaSilva said. “This should be a very second-half loaded season similar to what we saw in 2024. This is only the first of, I think, many tropical waves that we’re going to be watching coming across the Atlantic.”
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DaSilva said another wave is already poised to move into the Atlantic behind the current one, possibly late next week.
Forecasters also expect activity to pick up later in September in the Gulf, which has been unusually quiet so far this hurricane season.
That’s a particular concern to experts, who say the lack of tropical systems — which can churn deep, cooler water toward the surface — has pushed water temperatures to record levels for this time of year.
Surface temperatures on Thursday were at the warmest on record for this date, DaSilva said. And ocean heat content in the Gulf, which indicates how much energy is in the warm water, is at the second-highest levels after 2024.
And that means explosive development of any tropical system that reaches the Gulf.
“There’s a lot of energy in the Gulf,” DaSilva said. “And, of course, in 2024 we saw Milton and Helene really rapidly intensify in the Gulf. So that’s the concern here as we go into the second half of September and into October as well, is that if anything is able to get in there, it’s likely that it would rapidly intensify.”
The tropical hazard outlook for September, issued by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center this week, indicates that forecasters expect the warmer waters to increase the chances of tropical activity in the Gulf next week. The second half of hurricane season typically sees more activity in the Caribbean and Gulf than the first half.
By the week of Sept. 17, the threat of potential tropical activity in the central Atlantic and eastern Caribbean increases substantially. September and October are historically the most active months of the Atlantic hurricane season.
