It's storm season in the Gulf South and the National Hurricane Center has been tracking tropical disturbances near Florida. Tropical Storm Barry formed over the weekend and now forecasters are looking at more worrisome weather forming near Florida.
KSLT Meteorologist Jennifer Narramore joined Louisiana Considered this week to give an update on the season.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
DIANE MACK: Can you start by telling us about Barry? It formed over the weekend before making landfall Sunday night. What were the impacts?
JENNIFER NARRAMORE: The impacts were primarily in Mexico, and it actually started off as a tropical depression. It was designated that on Saturday afternoon by the National Hurricane Center in the Bay of Campeche, and then the hurricane hunters indicated it had strengthened a bit on Sunday, became a tropical storm, and the name was Barry. Maximum winds made it all the way up to 45 miles per hour at the center, and then it weakened slightly before it made a landfall Sunday night along the Gulf Coast of Mexico as a tropical depression, so it never strengthened enough to hurricane status. It made its way though to tropical storm, and then it kind of fizzled across eastern Mexico on Monday. The main impacts were heavy rain. Some areas actually picked up a good three to six inches of rain.
MACK: It seems forecasters are looking at another tropical disturbance headed towards the Florida coast. Can you give us an update on that?
NARRAMORE: Yeah, it’s a little tricky. We have a front that is expected to stall out across parts of the southeast. It's gonna kind of hang out there for a little bit. And the weather computer models are hinting at maybe a weak area of low pressure trying to form along that front, somewhere along the eastern Gulf over Florida, or even into the southeast coast, off the Atlantic waters there. The chances for formation over the next seven days are pretty low, that's coming in from the hurricane center at about 30%. The computer models are not too impressed with anything major forming at this point, but we have plenty of moisture in place and right along boundaries here at this time of year, that's typically where we could see areas of low pressure forming. So it's certainly something to monitor, but right now we're not expecting any major development from that.
MACK: It is only June. How common is it to see this many disturbances so early in hurricane season? What does that signal for the rest of the season?
NARRAMORE: Well with Barry's formation on June 29, it came well before what's typically what we would see here. Typically, we'd have the second name storm right around mid-July, and that's based on climatology from 1991 to 2020. And the usual date of the Atlantic's first hurricane is more toward the early parts of August.
I do wanna mention that it was just a year ago that we had Hurricane Beryl that was making a landfall just today, a year ago, and that was over the Grenada island of Carriacou, maximum winds at 150. And of course, we watched that storm become the record earliest Category 5, Atlantic Basin hurricane on the evening of July 1. And then eventually, of course, it made its way weakening as it did so through the Gulf, and then eventually making a landfall in Texas, which became of course, an extremely busy season last year. Beryl was just the first of many. But it's not too typical to see two named storms. Luckily though, they've been very short-lived.
MACK: Well, even if none of these events turn into hurricanes, how might these disturbances impact the local weather? What should we expect to see in New Orleans in the next week or two?
NARRAMORE: Yeah, of course we're getting ready for the big holiday and the holiday weekend. I do not anticipate any tropical development that's happening across the eastern parts of the Gulf or Florida or the southeast coast to have a major impact here.
The main influences on our weather here in the near term, there is an upper low to our east. We have a front coming in from the north. And once the front comes through by late tomorrow, we actually get slightly drier. So we may not see much in the way of any wet weather Thursday, Friday for the 4th, and even into our Saturday. We can't rule out maybe a pop-up or two, but right now, we're not expecting any widespread storms. And then there are some indications that the moisture will really start to increase through the latter half of the weekend into early next week, and that will lead to more of our typical afternoon and evening storms. But after tomorrow, not expecting much in the way of any storms and pop-ups. It will be hotter, so you need to prepare for that for the holiday weekend.
