AccuWeather hurricane expert Alex DaSilva was live on the AccuWeather Network on Aug. 11 to discuss the latest in the tropics.

Meteorologists are closely tracking a tropical rainstorm in the Atlantic, currently situated between the West Coast of Africa and the East Coast of the United States. The system is expected to slowly organize into a tropical storm, with forecasts indicating rapid intensification later in the week. 

The storm's projected path places it northeast of the Bahamas within a week, but its future track remains uncertain due to several atmospheric factors, including the position of the Bermuda High, a cold front, and a dip in the jet stream. While the entire U.S. East Coast is advised to monitor the system, current patterns suggest that areas from North Carolina northward, including Atlantic Canada, may be more vulnerable. Regardless of its exact path, rough surf and rip currents are anticipated along the eastern seaboard.

First Atlantic hurricane of the season likely in the near future

There's the East Coast of the United States, there's the West Coast of Africa, and there's our tropical rainstorm right now, approaching 30 degrees west, about 17 or 18 degrees north. Now, here's some bullet points over the next couple of days. Slow organization into a tropical storm, that'll be by midweek. Then look for rapid intensification later this week, and then early next week, so about a week to eight days from now, the hurricane, and we think it will, will be located east northeast of the Bahamas. All right, with that, I want to bring in our hurricane expert, Alex DaSilva, and Alex, you know, when we're looking at these systems, when we're looking at development, water temperatures typically are warm enough for development. Of course, the warmer the water is, the more likely or the more fuel there is, but the two main things we look at that can change this time of the year is dry air and wind shear. Let's take a look at the water vapor loop this morning, and there's the dry air located north and west of our tropical rainstorm. Yeah, most of the dry air is actually ahead of the tropical rainstorm. There was a big plume of dust that came off of Africa out in front of this tropical rainstorm, but you can see around the tropical rainstorm, not a whole lot of dust to be seen in and around the tropical rainstorm. If it can keep most of this dust out in front of it, it may be able to build a core, and once it builds a core, then usually these tropical systems can do a pretty good job of fending off a lot of that dry air. Let's talk about wind shear. I wouldn't say conditions are perfect right now, but it's not all that bad either. Yeah, certainly this is the least amount of wind shear I think we've seen this entire tropical season, and you'd expect that heading into the month of August, especially the middle of August, but you can see all this light purple across most of the main development region as those arrows are going through. That is areas of low wind shear, and so that is very favorable for tropical development. It has to go through a little bit of patch of higher wind shear, but you can see most of that track has very little wind shear, and this is why we're concerned that especially as it approaches the islands to the north of the Lesser Antilles, this is where we could see some pretty rapid intensification. Which is the AccuWeather iPath forecast right now as we get into the latter half of the week. Now, you and I know there's always forks in the roads with these storms where it could go one way or the other. One thing that we have noticed that this track continues to the west, slightly northwest through most of this week, but I think the first fork in the road is that time frame Sunday into Monday where a lot of the computer guidance, or most of them, start turning this to the north, and that's where we have some questions. Yeah, I think confidence is pretty high in fact that this will be in around that area on Saturday. It's going to be driven west much in part by the Bermuda High, so it's going to be on a westward course for much of its life here, but like you just mentioned, by the time we get more into that Sunday-Monday time frame, there's a lot of questions that open up. Which position is the Bermuda High to the east going to be in? And then there's going to be a cold front that's going to be sweeping off the east coast, but it's going to be weakening as it does so. So the question is, will that cold front be strong enough to help it steer it out to sea? Or will the storm just kind of barrel right through the cold front and keep moving to the west? There's many different opportunities and many different features to watch. There's also a dip in the jet stream we're going to have to watch coming into the east as well. So there's like three different players here on the ball field that's going to be steering this once we get into late weekend into early next week. It's almost like the game of dominoes. We get to that point and there are three paths. Which way is it going to click? You had mentioned then the next fork in the road, and I think this is another critical time frame. We're watching another dip in the jet stream moving from the midwest to the northeast. And then, depending on that trough, that's going to have a lot to say on where this is going to go. Yeah, the first scenario, this would be the best case scenario, that the storm would be steered away from the United States. If the trough is a little stronger, a little bit faster, it'll just bump the storm out to sea. It'll just push it right out to sea like what we would typically see during a lot of these recurving storms. However, if the trough is a little bit slower, then the storm can come a little further west and that can allow it to get maybe closer to the Carolinas, maybe just off the northeast coast and then certainly towards Atlantic Canada. So, this would obviously be the much more concerning scenario, scenario number two. And right now, you know what it is? We haven't cleared anybody along the eastern seaboard, Alex, but climatology and the pattern kind of favors that if there's a direct impact, it would most likely be North Carolina on north. Yeah, that's the way it looks like. A lot of these storms tend to kind of recurve to the north and to the east, so, you know, the entire east coast needs to at least be keeping an eye on it, but if there's areas that might be a little bit more vulnerable right now, like you said, it would be from the Outer Banks north, certainly eastern Canada. That area is even more vulnerable, I think, with this particular setup. And regardless, rough surf rip currents mid to late next week up and down the eastern seaboard. AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva, Alex, thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather Early.

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