Wind shear destroys Carolina disturbance

As expected, high wind shear from a protuberance of the jet stream has destroyed the circulation of the disturbance off the coast of South Carolina. The remnants of this system will move ashore into northern Florida and/or Georgia on Friday, bringing some spotty heavy rains.


Figure 1. Current long range radar out of Jacksonville, FL.


Figure 2. Preliminary models tracks for the East Coast disturbance.

Tropical wave off of Africa
A very strong tropical wave has moved off the coast of Africa today, and is centered near 7N 16W. The QuikSCAT pass from 3:17pm EDT reaveals winds of up to 60 mph to the west of the center. The wave has a lot of rotation, but not a closed circulation. The past two days worth of GFS model runs have been developing this system into a hurricane that threatens the Lesser Antilles in about a week. None of the other models develop the system. SSTs are a bit cool at 27C (81F), and wind shear is a fairly high 20 knots, so let's see how this cool water and moderate shear affects the system overnight before talking about whether it represents a future threat.

Jeff Masters