Watching The Tropics
A few things are going on that are affecting the tropical weather.
The follow on wave that came off of Africa after TD 7 started to move to the Northwest, which put it over cooler water and into the envelop of dry air coming off the Sahara. If the waves don’t move due West and stay below 20°N they won’t develop.
TD 7 did that right, but it was moving too fast to expand, so when it encountered the wind shear near the Windward Islands, it didn’t have the inertia to overcome it.
Looking at the Sea Surface Temperature map for the Pacific shows that an El Niño seems to be developing off the coast of Peru, which would correspond with the wind shear that has been consistent in the Caribbean.
We may get a lot of tropical events this year, but the big ones will probably be at the peak in late September and October.
