HARLINGEN — One of the most active tropical storm seasons in memory is taking a breather, but we’re not clear of the tangled spaghetti models just yet.
Just two weeks after seven tropical disturbances were roiling the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico on the same day, things have gone dead quiet.
The only lonely storm out there Saturday was Paulette, the hurricane that hit Bermuda more than a week ago, dissipated to almost nothing, and suddenly came back to life far out in the Atlantic.
“Because 2020, we now have Zombie Tropical Storms. Welcome back to the land of the living, Tropical Storm Paulette,” the National Weather Service tweeted on social media over the weekend.
Paulette vanished completely, and probably for good, on Sunday afternoon.
“Official hurricane season runs through the end of November so we still have two solid months to go,” Joseph Tomaselli, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Brownsville, said Sunday.
“The atmosphere’s just taking a pause right now, but all indications are it’s going to get going again in October and possibly in November,” he added.
For weeks tropical storms and waves, hurricanes, and budding disturbances have been churning in the Atlantic, Caribbean and the gulf.
But as of Sunday, no tropical formation is forecast in these seas for the next five days.
So far this year, 23 named storms have formed in the Atlantic basin, and that’s about double the average for the usual hurricane season. Nine of those storms have made landfall on the U.S. mainland, tying the all-time record set in 1916.
“Just monitor all of the updates from the National Hurricane Center because they’re usually johnny-on-the-spot when it comes to the possible development of any disturbances out there,” Tomaselli advises.
One good bit of unrelated weather news is a cold front will be barreling into the Rio Grande Valley today, and temperatures are predicted to be around 80 to the low 90s through Friday. Overnight lows will be in the 50s and 60s.
“There will be a cold front coming through during the mid-day on Monday so it should be a refreshing air mass change coming up here to start the week,” Tomaselli said.
