Here we are, starting July with only one named storm so far this season. That is expected to change this week as a piece of energy makes its way from central Georgia into the Gulf of Mexico.
The National Hurricane Center has given this system a 10% chance of development over the next 2 days, and an 80% chance of development over the next 5 days.
So, what does a system in central Georgia have to do with the tropics? Don't tropical events usually come from Africa and the Caribbean Sea? Well, not all of the time. In this case, a low pressure center is going to develop on the end of a deteriorating front and enter the northeastern Gulf of Mexico near the big bend of Florida.
The best way to see the energy is to look at the track of the foundation for this system is (prepare for big meteorology words) relative vorticity. All that means is areas of spin in the atmosphere. Watch the blue and green colors on the ECMWF in central Georgia at the beginning of the animation and follow it into the northeastern Gulf of Mexico. That's our system.
Most of the models agree on a similar solution to the one above, bringing the developing system south of Panama City by Wednesday afternoon. From there we see a divergence in solutions from our 2 major models: the ECMWF (European) and GFS (American). So. let's take a look at both.
First, the ECMWF, the same model we used to follow the spin from Georgia into the Gulf. It develops "Barry" and intensifies it over the northern Gulf of Mexico between Wednesday-Saturday or so, with an eventual landfall near the Texas/Louisiana border Saturday afternoon.
A majority of the ensemble members (ensemble meaning the same model with a variable changed on each run) show similar solutions with a majority of the runs showing the storm coming ashore between Houston and New Orleans. Per usual, there are outliers showing the storm moving inland anywhere from Apalachicola to the Mexican border.
The GFS is not bullish with this storm at all. Notice above that the ECMWF that the pressure, a good indicator of the strength of the storm drops into the 980s. The GFS (shown below) doesn't even show the storm dropping below 1000 millibars (relatively weak storm).
With those in mind, it is safe to say that everyone on the northern Gulf Coast needs to keep their eyes on this. No matter the strength of this storm, it will provide heavy rain through next weekend along the coast, with multiple locations receiving several inches of rain.
Bottom line, it is too early to pinpoint an exact forecast because the system is not even over water yet. Here is what's safe to say: there has been a westward shift in computer models over the past several days that should not be over looked. Anywhere from the central Texas Gulf coast to Panama City should be prepared for a tropical storm towards the end of the week, which its highest impact will be rain.
We'll watch computer model trends through the day and see what changes need to be made this afternoon.
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