Pacific Tropical Storm Barbara Moving Into the Gulf? Interesting Setup… Wednesday Update – 12pm

Good Wednesday midday to you! We’re watching Tropical Storm Barbara as it makes its track north today. The storm is forecasted to become a hurricane before making landfall sometime tonight along the southern Mexican coast. Barbara will spend about 24 hours over land before moving into the Bay of Campeche  on Thursday or Thursday night. Model data is now showing the storm surviving the track across land and moving into the southwest Gulf of Mexico. A few models try to bring the storm towards the central Gulf Coast in 4 to 5 days.

Here’s the deal… There is some wind shear and dry air over the Gulf of Mexico. If the system makes it into the gulf, it will battle these harsh elements. Plus, the water temperatures are not very warm. Sure, the gulf is above the standard 80 degrees for tropical development, but the layer of warm air isn’t that deep, and a strong, damaging hurricane needs a deep layer of very warm water and water temperatures well over 80 degrees. The bottom line, we don’t have to worry about this storm becoming a damaging hurricane and making a big problem for the gulf coast. We’ll watch it in the coming days, and update you on the track and intensity. At this time, I’d say there is a fair chance of it re-developing into a tropical depression or a very weak tropical storm in the Gulf late in the week or over the weekend.  I would not cancel a beach trip over this system for sure… At this point, we still don’t know where it’s going to end up or if it will survive at all.

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Richard Scott

WVUA Chief Meteorologist

rscott@wvuatv.com

Twitter: Richard_wvua