FLHurricane.com: TD 10 is now upon us

It's near the diurnal convective maximum, so the standard short-term caveats apply in this case, but TD 10 is looking, well, like a tropical depression once again. Convection has flared up around the center in curved bands, primarily to the northwest and notheast of the center. It is still in a shearing environment and will likely remain so for the next day or two, but it is looking quite a bit like Irene did for several days. I mentioned earlier that I'm not sure why the downgraded it so quickly, particularly given what they maintained with Irene, but they are the experts and I'm not going to say it was a bad call...just one I'd like some clarification on.

If current trends continue, I expect they'll pick back up with advisories sometime Monday. That said, I'd only put it at 50/50 that current trends continue, given the shear in the vicinity of the disturbance. No matter whether it gets picked back up or not, it should continue largely to the west or west-northwest and be near the northern islands in a few days. The weakness of the storm plus it missing the weakness from the trough to the NE are the culprits in this motion. Beyond that, model solutions diverge, with the potential for this to either head back out to sea (NOGAPS, ) or turn more towards the west (GFS, UKMET) -- needless to say, it's way too early to make a forecast on this, given that it isn't even a depression right now.

The forecasts a more favorable upper-level environment to develop near the storm in the next day or so, while the UKMET tracks an identifiable entity through 6 days to a position near the Bahamas, suggesting some development may be possible later in the period. The is a bit more bullish than the on developing this ridging, a departure from what was forecast in most of yesterday's runs. They will all have to be watched for continuity and to see if this all actually occurs, but given the model concurrence, it's a good bet things will get more favorable through time.

So, to recap...it's not TD 10 right now, but it's not out of our hair just yet. We'll watch it.

Interesting to note...it's 5-6 days out, but all of the models are picking up on a strong feature coming off of the coast of Africa at that point. Another upper-low is forecast to build into the central Atlantic in 3-4 days, but start to move out about the time this feature hits the coast. The favorable environment conditions are coming, as advertised...we'll have to see how this pans out.

More Monday or Tuesday.

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