May 29, 2026 Friday Tropical Update
Gulf of Mexico next week could spin up a weak tropical system
May 2026 was the 29th-warmest May in the 132-year national record (1895–2026), at 61.7°F against a 1991–2020 normal of 61.0°F (+0.6°F).
May 2026 was the 63rd-driest May in the 132-year national record (1895–2026), at 2.9in against a 1991–2020 normal of 3.1in (-0.2in).
NOAA/NCEI Climate at a Glance, contiguous United States. This is the observed record for the month, not a score of anything said in this piece — the forecast ledger begins 2026-08-17 and cannot reach earlier posts.
Headlines for Friday
Tropical Storm Jangmi (06W) intensifying slowly in the Western Pacific east of Luzon
Eastern Pacific hurricane season should get underway with a weak TS (80%) well away from land
Atlantic: Watching the Gulf of Mexico for potential quick spin-up of a depression or storm later next week as strong tropical moisture laden flow bends northward out of the Caribbean
My Atlantic Hurricane Season Forecast (2026)
From April 7, 2026: Atlantic Seasonal Hurricane Forecast: (11/5/2)
9-13 Named Storms (11 most likely)
4-7 Hurricanes (5 or 6 most likely)
1-3 Major Hurricanes (2 most likely)
Accumulated Cyclone Energy: 75-85 (well below normal)
Atlantic Basin Satellite Channels
Milky haze with Saharan Air Layer and dust across the eastern half of the tropical Atlantic. A strong trough has completely cleared out the Caribbean.
GeoColor satellite shows the visible “true color” just as you’d see from space — in geostationary orbit (locked in place to look down) … aside from the puffy clouds and some storms, you can see the milky brown haze = African dust or Saharan Air Layers (SAL) that come off Western Africa into the Atlantic Ocean. SAL is bad for the hurricane business = stable/warm layer that limits instability and convection (storms)
Infrared (Channel 13) colorized —> showers and thunderstorms
Very clear, not a cloud in the eastern Caribbean. Some convection across Panama with a tropical wave. Gulf of Mexico moisture transport continues to fire convection.
Water Vapor (Mid-Level Ch. 9) - troughs + areas of descending/dry air
Honking mid-level trough = bone dry air completely wiping out clouds and any showers over a large area of the Caribbean into subtropical Atlantic. This would be a showstopper for any tropical activity during the heart of the season.
ECMWF 18z | Precipitation Type + MSLP | Next 10-days
Eyes on the Gulf of Mexico for a brief tropical depression or storm spin-up that would mainly be a continued rainfall threat. The “hot spot” for storm development in early June is the Gulf especially for poorly organized blobs of convection.
The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) in the tropics along 5°N to 10°N is where moist air can ascend and form thunderstorms or like a convective pot boiling over = convection. In the coming weeks, especially into late June, we’ll look for areas of disturbed weather — which means persistent convection — and potential formation of low pressure swirls along the ITCZ with tropical waves, in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico (America) with decaying frontal boundaries, and other pathways like tropical transition or subtropical cut-off lows. Lots of options/ways to form a tropical storm in the Atlantic in any given season.
The Bermuda High —> Azores High in the subtropics usually keeps things quiet in the latitude around 30°N and suppresses the ITCZ to the south in late May into June. On the periphery of the Bermuda High, moisture plumes out of the Caribbean into the Gulf and then Texas + Southeast.
NASA GEOS5 (00z) —> African dust plume forecast next 10-days
Major SAL plume half way across the tropical Atlantic — will continue to the Caribbean and maybe the Gulf within 6-7 days. Interesting clockwise swirl of SAL/dust gets intertwined in a high-pressure cell near the Azores.
North Atlantic Tropics | Quiet Next 7-days
2 Tropical Waves — none developing.
The Atlantic remains cooler than past 2-decades across the Main Development Region [MDR] from the Lesser Antilles (Caribbean) to the Azores and coast of Africa. This is NOT a positive signal you’d expect for an active season, but Atlantic SST varies on short-time scales (1-2 weeks) and a change in position of the Bermuda/Azores subtropical ridges can adjust trade winds to quickly warm up the Atlantic MDR.
The SAL + strong trade winds should keep the MDR cooler than normal into early June.
My favorite parameter —> Precipitable Water (PWAT) next 10-days
Boatloads of tropical moisture from the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico surging into Texas to Florida. You can see the sharp wave of the Saharan Air Layer smashing westward through the Caribbean in the coming days.
Tropical storms and hurricanes are bundles of high moisture air > 2” in the column (or more) so we look for areas of concentrated high PWAT air in the tropics —> and we also can view frontal boundaries or dry air input from the middle-latitudes into the subtropics or tropics + Saharan Air Layers (dry)
Integrated Vapor Transport —> IVT next 10-days
Maybe a swirl in the Gulf of Mexico in 6-days — that’s the only show in town.
The transport of rivers of moist air —> IVT is great metric to show tropical storm development. The impressive plume of tropical moisture is easily tracked through the Caribbean into the Gulf of Mexico — with the subtropical ridge pushed well east to the Azores as the massive upper-level trough dominates the Western subtropical Atlantic.
Western Pacific Basin — Typhoon Season is Underway | Jangmi (06W)
Tropical Storm Jangmi (06W) has developed a little more inner-core but has a little more work to do in order to moisten / eradicate the dry air in the center.
Jangmi looks more like a Typhoon … and should increase from 50 knots to 65 knots in the next 12-hours
Track of Jangmi is well east of Taiwan — with southern islands of Japan under most threat at storm expands in size and undergoes extratropical transition. The center is just east of Tokyo in 5-days
Ocean Temperatures (SST) very warm > 28°F over the “warm pool” plenty sufficient for any category of Typhoon, assuming one can form, but actually slightly cooler than normal along the northern side of the warm pool, with a sharp gradient north of the Kuroshio Current wall. Jangmi has 3-4 days over the warmest water before hitting the much cooler waters.
HAFS-A mesoscale model has plataued with intensity in the 960s mb — so we can expect around 95-knots maximum winds = Cat 2/3
ECMWF Full Physics Ensemble Tracks — 50 members next 10-days
Google Deep Mind
Difference again between ECMWF full-physics and the Google Deep Mind … there’s almost much less cross-track spread with the Google ensemble forecasts. I think we still want more spread — to capture outliers especially at the outset of any storm development. Something to watch in the coming weeks/months of hurricane season.
ECMWF IVT shows the circulation and intensification of Jangmi (06W)
Maybe another system in the South China Sea in 4-5 days
Eastern Pacific Tropics | 2026 Season To Get Underway
Amanda, Boris, Cristina, Douglas, Elida
80% Chance of Tropical Depression development within next 7-days but not seeing much on the satellite imagery this evening
Ocean Temperatures are much warmer than normal for late-May
ECMWF Precipitable Water Next 10-days
Integrated Vapor Transport Next 12-days
Not expecting too much out of the first system being watched … but could see pressure in the 990s = tropical storm
Next system in the 8-10 day range along the coast of Mexico could be the season’s first hurricane (or stronger)
Global Ocean Temperatures —> Sea Surface Temperature (SST)
Tropical storms need at least 26°C SST to form and intensify … and hurricanes most often become major with 28°C SST (at least) … the Atlantic has plenty of real estate that could support a TS or H, but nothing percolating as the basin is very hostile or unfavorable to formation. Note, it is the “actual” ocean temperatures that fuel hurricanes, not anomalies or deviations from climatology.
There are still rather cool (relative) areas in the Western Pacific and North Atlantic compared to the growing warmth along the Equator and off the western coast of Mexico with the oncoming El Niño. The recent 20-year climatology highlights much better than an older 1991-2020 baseline.
Thank you for reaching the end of this post! Hopefully you enjoyed the tour of the global tropics and what’s coming in the weeks/months ahead in the tropics here on Weather Trader on Substack.
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For 2026 Hurricane Season: Every 6 or 12 hours, we get an update including these model output
ECMWF EPS full-physics ensembles … 50 perturbed members + control/HRES
ECMWF AIFS-Ensemble (data driven) … another 50 members + control
ECMWF AIFS-Single … a special deterministic system that has exceptional skill
NOAA GEFSv12 Ensembles … 30 perturbed members + control
NOAA GFSv16 … 13-km high resolution global deterministic
UK Met Office MOGREPS lagged ensembles … global 14-km 72-members per day
Environment Canada ensembles + Germany ICON + Australia BOM Unified Model
New Google WeatherNext 1000-member ensemble system (!) more on that in future post
NOAA 2026 Atlantic Hurricane Season Forecast
More details in Thursday, May 21, 2026 Tropical Update
- Milepost
- 946 · laid 2026-05-30T00:26:31.529000Z
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- https://weather.substack.com/p/may-29-2026-friday-tropical-update
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