Erin No Threat to Land

Erin No Threat to Land, Disorganized System Over the Gulf of Mexico.

 

We continue to monitor an area of low pressure in the southern Gulf of Mexico, Tropical Storm Erin in the far east Atlantic and two weak tropical waves that will affect the eastern Caribbean this weekend.

Visible satellite images early Saturday morning has the circulation 120 miles west-northwest of Campeche Mexico. The low has moved almost due west during the past 6 hours at less than 5 mph. Satellite and Mexican radar images still show no signs of convective showers or thunderstorms wrapping around the low. Southwest shear continues over the system and this is causing a large area of deep convective showers and thunderstorms to be displaced off to the northeast of the surface low.

An upper level trough moving into the northwest Gulf of Mexico will maintain southwesterly shear over this system and over the northern half of the Gulf of Mexico into Sunday. The lower level wind flow will remain out of the east and so the surface low should drift westward the next few days.

If this low is going to develop it probably won't happen until sometime Saturday night or Sunday and it will have to be independent from the activity currently off to the northeast. As the upper level trough starts to lift out to the northeast tonight and Sunday the shear over this system should decrease.

So, if this surface low survives through tonight and thunderstorms wrap around the center it could develop a whole new mid to upper level structure. That would be necessary for it to become a depression or tropical storm. There might be just enough time for this to take place. If this does happen then a depression or tropical storm could threaten south Texas Sunday night and Monday.

Erin has strengthen back into a tropical storm. All of the convection is well north of the center of circulation. So, it will remain a weak tropical storm over the next two days. But the diagnostic computer information shows the system will remain over cool water and in a dry and more stable environment which will weaken Erin back into a depression.

Longer range model output still suggests the large thunderstorm area moving near the west coast of Africa becoming the next tropical wave and perhaps an organized tropical system next week.

Elsewhere across the Atlantic Basin, tropical development is unlikely through the weekend.