ACCUWEATHER:The Montana Hurricane Connection By Alex Sosnowski, Expert Senior Meteorologist
Aug 13, 2010; 11:55 AM ETShare |
AccuWeather.com Hurricane Expert Joe Bastardi offers his comments on the tropics in this video.
What does snow in Glacier National Park, Montana have to do with the Atlantic hurricane season? Not much, but it is a sign of changes coming that will breathe life into the tropical Atlantic.
Snow was falling at Glacier National Park Friday morning in the mountains above 7,000 feet. Up to a couple of inches of the white stuff fell.
The weather pattern that delivered this snow was made possible by a dip in the jet stream, known as a trough.
According to veteran meteorologist Mark Mancuso, "The trough and the snow are just the early signs of changes taking place in the weather patterns across the country that will make the pattern over the Atlantic more favorable for tropical development."
As that trough expands and shifts eastward, a bit of it will chop down the vastness and extreme nature of the heat that has been covering much of the eastern two-thirds of the nation this summer.
This is a mere snapshot of a single day in the upcoming progressive weather pattern, but a sign of changing times for the weather over the U.S., which then connects to the tropical Atlantic.
This is not to say that summer is over for the mid-South, as there are more hot days in store, but rather temperatures are expected to slip a bit over the entire region, while the warmth gets "redistributed."
With time, the real warm places will shift to the Northeast and the Four Corners.
With mega warmth over the eastern two-thirds of the nation much of summer, we had a vast area of rising air. Since the air cannot go up everywhere, compensating sinking air was suppressing tropical activity.
With less air rising over the U.S., the door is opened for rising air over warm tropical waters, which is just what tropical storms and hurricanes need.
Changes taking place at the surface, thanks to that trough marking a very subtle change in the seasons over the high country, will allow high pressure to take up position just off the East Coast. From here the circulation around that high would begin to steer any developing systems closer to the U.S., with possible landfalls.
AccuWeather.com Chief Hurricane Meteorologist Joe Bastardi said a few weeks ago that he expects an influx of storms to begin around Aug. 20.
Joe is still expecting this to happen and is holding on to his forecast delivered early in the summer of 18-21 named tropical systems in the Atlantic.
Now some computer models are jumping on board with their forecast of a hurricane developing in the Atlantic in the middle to later part of the month.
He said, "An upcoming frenzy of storms, days with two or three storms on the chart, will take the current perceived lack of storms up very quickly."
Bastardi said that the weather "pattern becomes more conducive for development" beginning around the latter part of August.
Mancuso agreed, saying, "We don't typically expect to see things ramp until the end of August and the beginning of September."
While some may be relaxing because the heart of the season is just beginning, Mancuso encouraged people not to let down their guard. He said, "It only takes one, in your area, to be the worst hurricane season ever."
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