The United States may have already seen three hurricane landfalls, including that of Category 4 Laura, but the historical peak of Atlantic hurricane season hasn’t even arrived yet. The tropics continue to remain bustling with activity, with the National Hurricane Center monitoring four additional systems. Two look to develop in the short term, but with limited impacts to the United States. The fate of the other two is more uncertain. The Atlantic has featured a typical season’s worth of storms to date in 2020, the ocean basin as a whole cranking out 55 percent more energy in tropical storms and hurricanes than typical by late August. The hyperactive season has also delivered the earliest C, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L and M named storms on record, even remaining ahead of the record-setting pace in 2005.
The four tropical systems under investigation are in various stages of development. One of them is poised to develop off the U.S. East Coast and head out to sea, while another could soon fight for a name in the western Caribbean. Meanwhile, two others — between the Lesser Antilles and Africa in the Atlantic’s “Main Development Region,” or MDR — are less organized, but they could develop in the coming days.
System off the East Coast
Invest 90L as captured by the GOES East weather satellite Monday morning. (Tropical Tidbits)
On Monday, the National Hurricane Center scheduled a Hurricane Hunters aircraft to investigate a system about 150 miles south-southeast of Wilmington, N.C. The center estimates that the system has about a 70 percent chance of developing into a tropical depression or receiving a name as a storm. The next name on the list is Nana.
