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A Quiet First Day of Fall for the Tropics

By: Dr. Jeff Masters, 2:01 PM GMT on September 23, 2014

The tropics are unusually quiet for the first full day of fall, with only one tropical cyclone active--Tropical Depression Fung-Wong in the Western Pacific, which grazed the coast of China near Shanghai Tuesday morning, bringing torrential rains to the coast. Fung-Wong is headed northeast towards South Korea, and will bring heavy rains there on Tuesday and Wednesday before dissipating.

In the Atlantic, none of our reliable models for predicting tropical cyclone genesis shows anything developing over the next five days. A tropical wave coming off the coast of Africa on Friday may be something to watch for development next week, according to the GFS model, but it is too early to assign any probabilities of such an event occurring.

In the Eastern Pacific, a well-organized tropical disturbance (99E) a few hundred miles south of Acapulco, Mexico was given 5-day odds of development of 90% by NHC in their 8 am EDT Tuesday Tropical Weather Outlook. Our reliable computer models keep 99E well offshore of the coast of Mexico this week as the storm heads west-northwest, parallel to the coast of Mexico.


Figure 1. Tropical Storm Fung-Wong as seen by MODIS at approximately 02 UTC Tuesday September 23, 2014. At the time, Fung-Wong had top winds of 40 mph. Image credit: NASA.

Hurricane expert Steve Gregory has a more detailed look at the tropics and this year's Arctic sea ice minimum in his Tuesday afternoon post.

Jeff Masters

Hurricane

The views of the author are his/her own and do not necessarily represent the position of The Weather Company or its parent, IBM.