00:00I want to bring in our lead hurricane expert, Alex DeSilva.
00:04And you know, Alex, there's been a little bit of a pause in the last week or so,
00:10which is a little bit of an anomaly, although it happened last year.
00:14Because when you look at history, this is always a busy time in the Atlantic Basin.
00:21Yeah, September 10th, we're coming up on it.
00:23That's the statistical peak of the Atlantic hurricane season.
00:26So we are approaching that right now.
00:28But ever since back in March when we released our forecast for this upcoming season,
00:32we thought that there could be a bit of a lull in the middle of the Atlantic hurricane season.
00:36But we really expected that after about that September 10th time frame,
00:39things would really ramp up across the basin.
00:42And that's what happened last year.
00:43And we're expecting a lot of the same as we go forward here over the next couple of weeks.
00:47Well, it was, what, about 10 days ago, maybe two weeks, we were dealing with Aaron, a large hurricane.
00:53And the footprint of Aaron is still visible in the southwestern Atlantic, Alex.
01:00Yeah, you can see that blue there off the east coast.
01:02That's from Aaron, actually.
01:03That's from the storm mixing up some of those waters, those big 40 to 50-foot waves that were out over the ocean there,
01:09mixed up some of that cooler water.
01:11But it has been rebounding.
01:12And I think over the next couple of days, maybe up to a week, those waters are going to be very close to where they were prior to Aaron.
01:18Now, these are the water temperature anomalies.
01:21Let's go into the Gulf of Mexico.
01:22And this, you know what, we talked about this.
01:25This is a ticking time bomb in the Gulf right now, Alex.
01:32Yeah, indeed it is.
01:33The water temperatures are several degrees above historical averages for this time of the year.
01:37And, in fact, the ocean heat content, which is the depth of that warm water, is near record levels.
01:42It's only behind last year's levels.
01:44So, and we remember what happened last year.
01:46We had Helene.
01:47We had Milton really explode in the Gulf.
01:49So, that's my concern as we're going over the next couple of weeks and months here,
01:52as we go to the second half of the hurricane season,
01:54is that if we get anything to form in the Gulf, more than likely it's really going to intensify really quickly.
02:01And so, that's why it's very important to keep tabs with the AccuWeather forecast.
02:05Yeah, that blue line showing the historical average, and you can see that red line.
02:09That's where we are this year.
02:11All right.
02:12We have some problems in the Atlantic.
02:14About 35 degrees west is that we're tracking that tropical wave.
02:19Yeah, that's the one that's on the right side of your screen here.
02:22That's the next tropical wave that we're going to be looking at.
02:25It has a high chance of developing here over the next day or so,
02:29but it's got some dry air in its way.
02:30You can see that really orange and yellow color in front of that tropical wave.
02:34So, it's going to have to navigate some of that dry air
02:38and even a little bit of wind shear that it's going to have to deal with.
02:41But if it's able to make it closer to the islands,
02:43it's able to get into an area of lower wind shear and lower dry air,
02:47and that's where we could really see this try to intensify
02:50approaching the islands early to middle portions of next week.
02:53We've had a high risk on this for the last few days,
02:56but you know what?
02:56A lot of other sources will just stop with that, that there's a high risk.
03:00But we're always trying to give as much advance notice as we can,
03:05and we want to let people know that live in the islands,
03:08that this is a system you're going to have to keep an eye on.
03:12Yeah, so we'll kind of track it out here.
03:13So, through the weekend, we're expecting it to organize
03:15maybe into a depression or tropical storm,
03:18then maybe even into a hurricane early next week.
03:20And then when it approaches the islands, middle portions of next week.
03:24That's the time frame we're going to have to watch.
03:26It could bring some rain and wind impacts to the islands.
03:28So we're going to have to keep an eye on this very closely.
03:30And then, down the road, maybe some impacts for the United States,
03:34but we have plenty of time to watch that.
03:36All right.
03:36AccuWeather lead hurricane expert, Alex DaSilva.
03:39Alex, thanks for joining us here.
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