The 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season got off to a roaring start with 4 named storms before the end of June, a very unusual feat. July was a quiet month, which is fairly common, and now things in the tropics are getting more interesting in August. We currently are watching Ernesto, which is a tropical storm likely to become a hurricane late tonight or early Tuesday. Ernesto should make landfall Wednesday near the Mexico/Belize border, and then weaken across central Mexico through this weekend. Florence is a remnant low that will continue to move west-northwest across the central Atlantic, likely remaining a weak system as it turns north between the U.S. and Bermuda. Of greatest interest to me is the consistent signal from the operational GFS of a hurricane affecting the east coast of the U.S. around the 21st and 22nd of August. Model solutions in days 10-16 typically have wild variability, but this model has more often than not at least shown the presence of a hurricane in the past half-dozen runs, even though the placement of the storm along the coast has changed considerably. The solutions range from a direct hit along the Mid-Atlantic (image above from the , to a complete miss several hundred miles offshore. It’s certainly not something to worry about right now, but definitely merits a watchful eye. It’ll be interesting to see if the GFS ensemble members, and especially the Euro, come on board when we get about ten days away. I’ll continue to monitor, and will have updates here and on my facebook page. -Zach
