Second tropical depression forms in Atlantic
It's been nearly two-and-a-half months since the season's first tropical depression formed in the Atlantic Ocean on May 28. The first one - TD-1 - faded away without ever becoming a named tropical storm. But the second one - TD-2 (who could have guessed it?) - may have a better shot at becoming Tropical Storm Ana.
Located about 200 miles west of the Cape Verde islands, TD-2 "could" become a named storm within a couple of days as it churns westward across the Atlantic, forecasters say. It poses no immediate risk to any land mass. (That's TD-2 crossing 30-degrees West in the satellite image above.)
Here is the latest advisory. Here is the forecast storm track.
Comments
It has been an amazingly quiet year for severe tropical storms and hurricanes. Perhaps the dire predictions for increasingly severe storm systems was a made a bit too prematurely. This is one reason why you need to gather substantial data over a long period of time to make such predictions, and even then you can be wrong. This is an important lesson for kids working on weather science fair projects to learn.
FR: Not really. June and July are normally fairly quiet. This season is only "quiet" compared with some unusually busy recent years. And the data are already in, showing a multi-decadal period of increased Atlantic storm activity began in 1995. And there's no need to invoke global warming to explain it. It's a well-documented Atlantic cycle.
Posted by: Weather Science Fair Projects | August 12, 2009 2:17 PM