DAY 76

Tropical Storm Gert made a nice attempt to reach hurricane strength today, but she never really came close. She moved pass Bermuda well to the east. At her strongest point, she had sustained winds of 60 mph and a pressure of 1000 mb.

(Tropical Storm Gert moving passed Bermuda)

Gert had very little impact on Bermuda. All her wind and rain was south of the center and stayed well out of reach from Bermuda. She is still a 60 mph storm tonight and is moving off to the northeast at 18 mph. Gert is forecast to remain a tropical storm for another 24 hours.

(Radar Reflection from TS Gert)

With 92L having been cannibalized by TS Gert, that leaves 93L as the only invest area left after it was reclassified today. It is moving past the Windward Islands and is a very large system with very little circulation to it. There is no circulation at the surface that is visible, but surface scans from satellite does show some decent surface vorticity.

(Invest 93L moving passed the Windward Islands)

The National Hurricane Center is only giving 93L a 20% chance of developing into a tropical cyclone over the next 48 hours. That's mostly because it still has a lot of dry air around it. But in about 24 to 36 hours it will encounter some very favorable conditions, and development probability should steadily climb as we move through the week.

The computer forecast models are keeping 93L on a westerly track through the Caribbean. With the exception of the GFDL which is not developing 93L at all at this point. This is still a very disorganized system, so you can throw out any model guidance after about 24 hours. It is reasonable to say that 93L will continue to move to the west through tomorrow, but we'll wait for the models to get a better grip on this thing before we say anything else. The track is likely to change again tomorrow, especially if there is any rapid growth in 93L.

If you buy into the intensity forecasts, it looks like 93L will become the Atlantic's first hurricane of the year. I do tend to believe that that will happen here because so many of the models are taking it to a hurricane. One model even goes all the way to a Cat 3 108 hours into the run. If 93L becomes Tropical Storm Harvey before August 20th, it will be only the 2nd time the Atlantic has ever reached the 'H' storm that early in the season since we started naming hurricanes in 1950. In 2005, Tropical Storm Harvey formed on August 2nd.