Two pesky areas of development off the Southeast U.S. and Mexican Pacific coast » Yale Climate Connections

Americans heading to northern Florida or the Southeast U.S. coast would be smart to keep an eye on a tropical disturbance that could develop over the upcoming holiday weekend. The main impact will likely be heavy rain – much of it offshore – but tropical weather can always have a surprise or two up its sleeve.

This time last year, it was Hurricane Beryl, an unexpected rapid intensifier that slammed the Windward Islands at Category 4 strength, causing catastrophic damage. Beryl then became the Atlantic’s earliest Category 5 storm on record on July 2 in the eastern Caribbean. After weakening into a tropical storm in the western Gulf, Beryl’s closing act was its sudden restrengthening back to Category 1 strength just as it reached the Houston area on July 8. In a postseason review this past January, Beryl’s top sustained winds at landfall were upgraded from 80 mph to 90 mph.

Read: One year after Hurricane Beryl, the Union Island community is trying to recover what was lost

Not only was Beryl’s rebound in strength sharper than expected, but the center’s track shifted just far enough toward the forecast cone’s east side to push some of the fiercest winds beyond the cone edge and directly over central Houston, causing far more havoc than many expected. In Texas alone, Beryl ended up wreaking more than $9 billion in damage and taking 44 lives. At least 29 other people were killed by Beryl, mostly in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Jamaica, and Grenada.

Nothing remotely as intense as Beryl is expected this weekend, fortunately. The main focus of attention will be the tail end of an upper-level trough and weak surface front pushing off the U.S. East Coast on Thursday. As the trough itself hustles eastward, a remnant of it will dive into the Southeast U.S., where it could nurture development of a weak surface low along the offshore frontal zone by Friday or Saturday. In turn, that low could evolve into a tropical depression or tropical storm during the weekend.

Steering currents and wind shear will be weak at first, and that may help the system to organize before the shear increases next week. Sea surface temperatures on either side of Florida are seasonally warm, around 28-29 degrees Celsius (82-84°F), more than enough to support tropical development. Whether or not a tropical cyclone develops, heavy rains could take shape, especially in the onshore flow expected across Florida’s west-central coast.

In its Tropical Weather Outlook issued at 8 a.m. EDT Thursday, the National Hurricane Center, or NHC, gave this area two- and seven-day odds of development of 20% and 60%, respectively. The next name on the Atlantic list is Chantal; it’s been used for two Category 1 hurricanes – an offshore “fish storm” in 1983 and a landfalling Texas hurricane in 1989 –and five tropical storms thereafter.

On the heels of Flossie, another hurricane is possible off Mexico’s Pacific coast

As it spun on Tuesday night about 200 miles west-southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico, Flossie became the second major hurricane in a row for the Eastern Pacific. Its sustained winds reached 115 mph at 11 p.m. EDT. After that peak, Flossie began encountering much cooler waters and drier air, and by Thursday it had weakened to tropical-storm status south of Cabo San Lucas. Flossie was predicted to be a post-tropical remnant low by Friday, if not sooner.

Not far from where Flossie was born, another disturbance was taking shape on Thursday, well south of the Gulf of Tehuantepec. This one may take a classic course similar to Flossie’s over the next few days, paralleling Mexico’s southern Pacific coast while remaining offshore. However, it could track farther west than Flossie, remaining over warmer waters as it heads safely out to sea; the long-range GFS model suggests it might become a potent hurricane by early next week.

In its Tropical Weather Outlook issued at 8 a.m. EDT Thursday, NHC gave this area two- and seven-day odds of development of 30% and 80%, respectively. The next name on the Pacific list is Gil – a tip of the hat to the late NHC forecaster Gil Clark, who was also the inspiration for the Atlantic’s Hurricane Gilbert.

An uncommonly quiet start to the Northern Hemisphere’s tropical season

Across the Northern Hemisphere, three of the four key areas that normally spawn tropical cyclones have been on the quiet side so far this year, with only the Northeast Pacific peppier than average. Granted, the total number of named storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes is close to average for the hemisphere, but the kicker is that most of these have been notably short-lived. So the number of days with named storms, hurricanes, or major hurricanes, as well as the total amount of accumulated cyclone energy, have all been well below average (see table below).

One part of the picture: Warmer-than-average waters have shifted this year from the Northern Hemisphere tropics into the subtropics (see Fig. 2 above and the embedded post below). In fact, sea surface temperatures over subtropical parts of the Northwest Atlantic are averaging 28-29 degrees Celsius (82-84°F), which is as warm or slightly warmer than current readings across the deep tropics of the Caribbean.

For the hemisphere as a whole from January 1 through July 2, the Real-Time Tropical Cyclone Activity tracker at Colorado State University showed the following cumulative activity, with the 1991-2020 averages in parentheses:

• Named storms: 11 (average 10.4)
• Named storm days: 22.5 (average 38.1)
• Hurricanes: 4 (average 4.4)
• Hurricane days: 4.5 (average 13.1)
• Major hurricanes: 2 (average 2.4)
• Major hurricane days: 1 (average 5.2)
• Accumulated cyclone energy (ACE): 28.4 (66.9)

There’s yet to be a single named storm in the North Indian Ocean. And the Northwest Pacific – which in a typical year produces more than half of all the hemisphere’s ACE through July 2 – has mustered less than 20% of the hemispheric total this year. (Long-range models suggest that a disturbance named Invest 98W near the Philippines could develop into a typhoon next week east of Taiwan and China.)

“The Eastern Pacific continues to be driving the Northern Hemisphere storm bus,” said CSU’s Phil Klotzbach in an email. For the 56 years in the CSU database (1970-2025), this year ranks seventh-lowest for Northern Hemisphere ACE through July 2, as shown in the statistics below provided by Klotzbach.

All this could change quickly. Klotzbach stressed that the six previous years above that got off to a slow hemispheric-wide start ended up producing wildly varied seasons in the Atlantic, ranging from the very quiet 1977, 1987, and 2013 to the hyperactive 1995 and 2017. It seems the phrase commonly heard in investment circles – “past performance is no guarantee of future results” – is well worth keeping in mind during early July when it comes to the northern tropics.

Proposed NOAA budget would destroy the basic infrastructure to do weather research

On June 30, NOAA’s proposed budget for next year (fiscal year 2026, which begins on October 1) was released by the Trump administration. The proposal included cuts catastrophic for both climate change and weather research – especially hurricane forecasting and research. The plan would close multiple government research labs that have been operating for decades, including the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (which includes NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division) and the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (which develops most of the hurricane computer forecast models). These labs are responsible for much of the improvement in hurricane forecasts over the past 25 years, when NHC’s track errors were cut in half and their intensity errors by about a third. Two other labs critical for hurricane forecasting and research, The Cooperative Institute For Marine And Atmospheric Studies and the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, are also to be eliminated.

Read: Trump’s climate research cuts are unpopular, even with Republicans

The cuts being proposed for NOAA, which still must go through a monthslong negotiation process with Congress before becoming law, are not simply budget reductions but a near-total destruction of the basic infrastructure needed to do U.S. weather research. Such a move would take decades to recover from, even if funding were fully restored the following year. Recovering from the loss of experienced scientists and the loss of the underlying infrastructure supporting their efforts would be like blowing up a dam and trying to glue the pieces back together. You can’t do it, and have to start over.

Several authors have covered these stories; below are Bluesky posts linking to them.