Tropical Update: Watching the tropics, nothing to panic about.

🌀 TROPICAL UPDATE: Good evening, everyone. Here's my newest Tropical Update. I know there are many questions regarding the tropics, and people are worried about the remainder of Hurricane Season. I understand there is a lot of PTSD from last season. I understand the concern, but please take a deep breath and calm down. As of Tuesday, the National Hurricane Center was monitoring two areas for possible development, as well as Tropical Storm Dexter (Dexter is out in the open Atlantic and not a concern). Let me walk you through my current thinking for both systems.

🟠Area #1: This is a weak surface trough located off the Southeast United States, it is producing some disorganized showers and thunderstorms, and an area of low pressure could develop over the next 1-2 days off the Carolinas. The National Hurricane Center gives it a 40% of becoming a Depression or Tropical Storm, at this point, I am not very concerned about it. Model data isn't particularly interested in the system; sometimes models perform poorly in this setup, so I'm hesitant to completely dismiss it. At this point, it could bring some increased moisture, increased Surf/Rip Currents late week to the coast as the system moves generally NE right along or just off the coast. Nothing to change or cancel plans for this weekend at this point, just some passing showers and storms possible along the coast. I will monitor it over the next 24-36 hours, just in case though.

🟠Area #2 This is a tropical wave located in the far Eastern Tropical Atlantic that has just come off Africa, along the Main Development Region of the Tropical Atlantic. As expected, models are all over the place over the next 7-12 days as some development is possible, but how strong where it goes is really anyone's guess. On image 2, I've created a graphic showing how long it takes systems in the Atlantic to travel on average. So again, there's plenty of time to monitor and see if this will ever pose a threat to the mainland. Note the graphic is just an example on image 2 and not a REAL FORECAST.

😎: The Bottom Line: Welcome to August in North Carolina we will be going through peak Hurricane season over the next 60 days, so as always, we will watch each area of concern like a hawk, but there is nothing to really worry about right now. Please be cautious of people sharing scary forecasts about storms that are more than 10 days away. As always, I will post updates as I think are necessary.

-Ethan

Update as of 8PM August 5th. 2025*