Ryan TruchelutFrom Tallahassee Democrat

Unless you’re reading this from Ireland or the western United Kingdom, it’s been a quiet week in the Atlantic. And as we count down the number of weeks, I’m increasingly hopeful that the U.S. can run out the clock on this hurricane season without further incident. However, there are a couple of hurdles along the way.

First, a quick recap on Ophelia. Hurricane season 2017 was after Ireland’s lucky charms this week. Not only did Hurricane Ophelia become the farthest east category 3 hurricane in the last 50 or so years, but it slammed western Europe as an intense post-tropical cyclone on Monday. Wind gusts in southeastern Ireland were clocked up to 119 mph, which (say it with me now) is an all-time Irish record. At least the records set this week occurred over 4,000 miles from Florida, which, to be fair, may be a meta-record for hurricane record broken farthest from Florida.

Anyway, there are no active storms in the Atlantic Basin Wednesday, and no immediate candidates to become Tropical Storm Phillippe. Strong shear is ripping across the Gulf and Caribbean as upper-level convergence stifles convection, and these unfavorable conditions are not expected to change for the next five days. That’s good news, because over 95 percent of historical U.S. tropical storm and hurricane landfalls occur before Oct. 20.

The storms that make U.S. landfall after that date tend to clip southern Florida on their way northeast and out-to-sea, so the longer the Caribbean can stay clear the better.

Something that bears watching is that upper-level winds may become more supportive of convection in the Caribbean and western Atlantic starting around a week from now, and remain that way through the first week of November. Model agreement is very good on this scenario, and many members of the GFS Ensemble are showing tropical development late next week to the south of Cuba. Fortunately, the jet stream pattern over the eastern U.S is favoring frequent frontal passages through the Southeast in week 2. This not only means the long-belated arrival of milder, fall-like weather, but also that steering winds would be more than likely to keep any tropical development well south and east of Florida.

Bottom line: look for a calm next 5-7 days in the Atlantic, followed potentially by a Caribbean last hurrah in the final week of October or first week of November. But overall, the window for U.S. tropical activity closes rapidly once Floridians start being able to open windows at night. Let’s hope that is the case this year as well.

IMAGE: Ryan Truchelut is co-founder and chief meteorologist at WeatherTiger, a Tallahassee weather consulting start-up. Get in touch at [email protected]. (Photo: WeatherTiger)

For more on this story go to: http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2017/10/18/weathertiger-calm-weather-expected-persist-next-week-so/772824001/