Good morning Bay Islands. No photo of the day today because we need to talk about Potential Tropical Storm Sara, which should form somewhere near the Mosquito Coast Thursday into Friday and will probably be to our north and east until Monday.
Let’s start with the satellite. You can see a few clouds in our area, including a very weak low pressure system spinning to our north. Today and tomorrow will continue to be mostly nice, with only a few passing showers and west winds 10-15 mph with seas around 2 feet, mostly north and west.
You can also see the scattered storms that are likely to become Sara in the Caribbean northwest of Baranquilla, Colombia.
Let’s talk about what the forecasts disagree on.
This is the vorticity (an X-ray of the atmosphere) showing the spin in the atmosphere according to the GFS. It shows a very strong, but also very small, hurricane forming to our east Thursday into Friday, being pushed back east over the weekend, then moving to our northeast on Monday. Most of the other forecasts have this storm much weaker, a borderline tropical storm or Category 1 hurricane when it passes us.
Let’s talk about what the forecasts agree on.
A. A tropical storm/hurricane will form Thursday or Friday to our east. Thursday and Friday both look like very rainy days here, with winds from the north/northwest 15-20 mph, perhaps gusting to 30 mph.
B. A cold front will come on Saturday that will push the storm back to the east. This is critical for us, because if this didn’t happen the storm would be headed our direction.
C. Sunday night into Monday the storm should move northwest, and pass us to our east. It is quite possible we will have cool, dry north winds on Monday, but waves will likely be quite high, perhaps 5-7 feet Thursday into Friday and maybe even worse Monday and Tuesday.
D. The storm itself will likely be quite small for a hurricane.
For what it’s worth, most of next week looks pretty nice with light north winds and fresh air behind the storm and the cold front. Be weather aware as we will know more after this storm forms on Thursday. Have a great Tuesday!
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