The few storms that have formed this Atlantic hurricane season have largely taken a similar path — curving away from the United States.
Hurricane Gabrielle is the latest example. The storm began in the deep tropics and journeyed north and west, then curled east away from land.
Several factors have steered Atlantic storms away from land this season, keeping Floridians safe. But it’s hard to predicthow long those factors will continue to influence the tropics in the latter part of the season, when storms historically develop closer to the state.
Forecasters are watching a disturbance that could buck the trend and threaten the U.S. East Coast.
Here’s a look at the weather patterns at play and what to expect in the coming weeks.
Since the start of this hurricane season, forecasters have monitored eight named storms.
Erin and Gabrielle, whichballooned into major hurricanes, eachmade a large “C” motion while traversing the Atlantic. Other systems, like Tropical Storms Fernand and Dexter, also curvedaway from land.
A keyplayer in how storms move is the North Atlantic subtropical high.
It’s more often referred to as the Bermuda High or the Azores High. The Bermuda High can move as it expands and contracts throughout the year.
In the summer and fall, it’s typically centered closer to Bermuda. In the winter and spring, its center is usually near the Azores, said Emily Powell, the assistant state climatologist at the Florida Climate Center.
“It has been a big part of the story this season,” Powell said.
Whenthe Bermuda High is farther west, it can cause storms to take a more southerly path toward the U.S. East Coast or Gulf Coast. But when it’s positioned farther to theeast, the storms follow a clockwise direction around the area of high pressure, avoiding landfall.
The Bermuda High has been farther east than is typical during a hurricane season.
“That’s … why we see those storms kind of picking up that clockwise flow and being steered north, northeast, well offshore,” Powell said.
Another factor has been thejet stream, a long current of strong winds that runs in the middle and upper levels of the atmosphere. Along that current are dips and peaks, also known as troughs and ridges.
For the past couple of months, there has been a near-constant trough along the U.S. East Coast, said Alan Gerard, a retired director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’sNational Severe Storms Laboratory.
The location of the trough has protected the East Coast from Florida northward, Gerard said.
“And that’s why you’ve seen all these systems turn and move more to the north across the Atlantic,” Gerard said.
Gerard said it’s not uncommon for storms to turn from land when they develop in the tropical Atlantic.
“What’s been a little more uncommon this year has been the persistence of that trough along the East Coast,” Gerard said. “It’s almost been like a semipermanent feature of the last couple of months.”
Roughly 1 in 3 hurricane landfalls in Florida occurs in the latter part of the season, which includes October, Powell said. Last year, Hurricane Milton made landfall on Oct. 9.
This time of year, experts look to areas like the Caribbean Sea, the Yucatán peninsula and the Bay of Campeche for storm development.
Temperatures in the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexicoare above average for this time of year, but not as high as last year. Warm waters provide fuel for storms.
“We’ve seen record warmth, even in the Gulf,” Powell said.
As Tropical Storm Humberto formed Wednesday in the central tropical Atlantic, forecasters were also monitoring a disturbance in the eastern Caribbean Sea.
The Bermuda High and the jet stream dip are both at play for these systems, Powell said. The Bermuda High is more likely to influence Humberto, while the path for the system farther west depends on when and where it develops.
Because the disturbance is so close to Humberto, their interactions could also impact whether the disturbance curves out to sea.
October is typically more of a transitional month during the hurricane season, said Michael Lowry, a hurricane specialist for WPLG Local 10 News in South Florida. That’s when cold fronts begin pushing south, which can help to generate storms or strengthen them.
“The bottom line is that (when) storms are forming closer to the U.S., we have less time to prepare, and the waters in the Western Caribbean are at their very warmest in October,” Lowry said.
“October is a bad month. It can be a bad month,” Lowry said.
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