I guess El Nino decided to take the week off. After two and a half months of inactivity, the tropics have sprung to life, with three named storms developing in the last 60 hours-Ana, Bill, and Claudette-and a fourth strong wave off of Africa. I will discuss each of these in order of threat to the US, following a brief analysis of cooling demand for the US next week.
Note: With the hurricane season heating up, Dr. Cane is now on Twitter as DrCane09 since this is often a faster way to provide updates as things quickly change. FOLLOW ME for regular updates regarding the Tropics, Trading, and misc other weather stuff.
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US Temperature Forecast
This week’s temperature forecast will be very symmetrical-warmth on both coasts with a trough and cooler-than average temperatures across the center. The cool weather in the Midwest will be due to a cold front sweeping down from southern Canada. It is this same trough that is forecast to later steer Hurricane (now Tropical Storm) Bill away from the United States.
Total Cooling Degree Days are shown below in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Total Cooling Degree Days for the upcoming week
Compared to last week, most areas of the country will see cooler temperatures. The exceptions will be the Northwest, the extreme Northeast, and Texas. Areas seeing the greatest cool down will be the upper Midwest, California, and the Southern Mid-Atlantic. The Change in Cooling Degree Days is shown below in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Change in Cooling Degree Days week-over-week
With 7263 total population-weighted cooling degree days, this upcoming week will be the third warmest of the summer, after last week and the week of July 25. I forecast there to be 9.3% fewer cooling degree days this week than last week. Based on this data, I expect the natural gas injection for this week (to be reported August 27) to be 59 BCF, which is below the 5-year average of 64 BCF and substantially below last year’s injection of 102 BCF.
Based on last week’s temperatures, I expect this week’s EIA storage report to show an injection of 55 BCF, above the average of 42 BCF, but below last year’s injection of 88 BCF. It would also represent the lowest injection of the summer.
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The Tropics
There are three active storms in the Atlantic basin. A broad tracking map is shown below in Figure 3 highlighting each of these storms.
Figure 3: Tracking map for the Atlantic Basin showing three storms–Ana, Bill, and Claudette
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Neither of these storms is directly threatening to boost commodity prices, although Ana, or her remnants, are expected to enter the Gulf late in the week. Each of these three storms is analyzed below.
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TS Claudette
Tropical Storm Claudette developed very quickly, going from “tropical blob” to “tropical storm” in roughly 15 hours. A westward-moving tropical wave acquired a circulation as it passed over Key West, Fl yesterday with strong winds and heavy rains, developed sufficient convection to be declared a Tropical Depression at 2am this morning, and was declared a tropical storm today at 12pm. Claudette’s rapid development can be attributed to the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, with some areas pushing 88F, and low shear. It currently has top winds of 50 mph and is moving to the NW at around 15 mph, although it appears to be slowing down slightly. Tropical storm warnings have been issued from the Florida/Georgia Border to Suwannee River, Fl. Claudette has a few small core, and I expect only a very small portion of this warning area to actually experience tropical storm conditions.
Radar out of Pensacola, shown above, indicates a rather well-defined storm with a clear center of circulation and even a sort of proto-eyewall structure trying to form. Claudette will not have much time to intensify as it is moving quickly to the northwest, but should make landfall this evening on the Florida Panhandle between Panama City and Apalachicola as about a 60 mph tropical storm. While geography of the panhandle makes the area very vulnerable to storm surge, the small size of Claudette and its fast motion will make any surge less than five feet. Rainfall will be the greatest threat from the storm, though due to its rapid forward speed this should be less than five inches in most places. That being said, this storm may come as a surprise to some residents who have not been keeping a close eye on the tropics.
I expect Claudette to have minimal impact on the natural gas infrastructure of the Gulf. It is east of the primary gas fields and should only be in the Gulf for another 6 hours, making it rather pointless to shut-in rigs and evacuate drillers.
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TS Ana
Not to sound callous, but tropical storm Ana would make the ideal cancer patient: She has got some serious will to survive. After being downgraded to a tropical wave after she succumbed to dry air and strong shear, Ana regenerated Saturday morning. Since then, Ana has continued to struggle despite minimal shear due to her fast forward motion that has caused the center to race far ahead of the convection. If not for a few well-timed bursts of convection over the center, Ana would likely have already been downgraded to a tropical depression or even an open wave. In fact, right now it doesn’t appear to have much of a circulation, although a recent flare up of convection is trying to wrap around a possible center. This new burst has also pulled the storm to the north and the track shown in Figure 3 above may eventually need to be shifted northward. The hurricane hunters will be investigating Ana today to determine its status. I give Ana a 40% chance of dissipating over the next 48 hours.
If it survives, Ana should continue west-northwestward, moving over, or just south of, the Greater Antilles of Puerto Rico, Hispanola, and Cuba. By Thursday or Friday, it could be entering the Gulf of Mexico and could head towards the same area of Florida that Claudette is striking today. That would make for a rather interesting insurance filing–“On August 16th, we were struck by Tropical Storm Claudette and a week LATER were struck by Tropical Storm Ana.” However, Ana has too many questions regarding its short-term fate to be worried about what it will do five days from now.
Should it reach the Gulf, Ana may threaten some of the oil and natural gas infrastructure in the Gulf.
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TS Bill
Having been long forecasted by the computer models, tropical storm Bill finally consolidated its circulation yesterday to become the season’s second named storm, forming roughly 12 hours after Ana. Bill remains a very broad system will its spiral bands radiating several hundred miles out from its center. While the storm is entraining some dry air right now, conditions are forecast to be modestly favorable with warm sea surface temperatures of over 84F and shear less than 15 knots. It currently has 60 mph winds, but is foreast to strengthen and could become a hurricane as early as tonight. By the time it reaches the longitude of the Leeward Islands, I expect Bill to be a major hurricane, with winds in excess of 110 mph.
It now appears that Bill will not make landfall in the United States. A trough of low pressure is forecast to move off of the East Coast right as Bill approaches the Bahamas. Despite their size and strength, hurricanes are actually big-pushovers when it comes to steering currents and usually just “go with the flow.” In this case, the flow will be from south to north and this should steer Bill northward and away from the Southeast coast. Bill will likely still throw some big waves at the US and it is too early to say if it will curve fast enough to miss the Northeast/Canada. I give Bill a 50% chance of recurving before it ever interacts with the United States.
It is unlikely Bill will ever enter the Gulf of Mexico to affect Oil/gas production.
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Elsewhere in the Tropics
A strong tropical wave moved off of the African Coast yesterday. While it is not much to look at right now, several of the more reliable models are indicating that it may slowly develop over the next few days. Just something to watch.
In conclusion, while there are a lot of things that COULD happen, I do not see anything that immediately threatens the Natural Gas infrastructure. While this burst of activity is promising for the rest of the season, I wouldn’t rush off an buy large Canedex positions yet. I currently own three Canedex stocks: UNG, SWN, and VLO.
Note: Major Karma Points to the first person to correctly identify the storm shown at the top. This is going to be a common theme of posts for the foreseeable future. A small hurricane warning flag will be awarded to the individual with the most points at the conclusion of the hurricane season, provided that they have at least 12.
1. Wabisabi-10
2. DPeezy-8
3. TraderCaddy-4
4. Yogi and Boo Boo-3
Disclaimer: Forecasts and Opinions are my own and are subject to error. Please rely on official National Weather Service forecasts.
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Camille?
About this time in 1969.
the photo at top looks much like hurricane Dennis 2005
You sir, are correct.
Dennis it is, and Jim picks up his first point. Congrats. Dennis was the first of four major hurricanes to hit the US in 2005 (the others being Katrina, Rita, and Wilma) and made landfall with winds of 115 mph on July 10 near Navarre Beach, Fl, very close to where Claudette should make landfall tonight. With wind speeds reaching 150 mph at its peak, Dennis set a record for the strongest July hurricane ever observed–a record he would only hold two weeks before Emily bested him. All told, Dennis did $2 Billion in damage and killed 42 people.
nice. Lets the ‘canes begin!
Yes and Bill will hit Long Island just because you wrote this.
Meh, Is that a problem? Long Island is just a big rubble pile left behind by retreating glaciers….
Doc:
1. is there any evidence the storms are bigger and more frequent like the guy fat guy from down south says in his movie?
2. Is AGW the real mcCoy or is it a leftist conspiracy?
j,
1) This is actually a very tough question that deserves more than a comment posting, and I plan to do it justice in a later post. In a very basic theoretical sense, one would think hurricanes might become both stronger and more frequent since warming temperatures mean warmer sea surface temperatures which means more fuel for storms. However, there is no substantiated evidence that hurricanes have become more frequent. Our data set for this measurement is frustratingly very small…dating only back to the mid 1800s. Additionally, we didn’t have satellites covering the entire oceans until the mid-1960s meaning that many over open waters were invariably missed skewing the data set towards the present. Thus our only really solid data goes back to about 1960. It actually appears that hurricane frequency functions in more of an oscillatory cycle: The 50s-60s were active, the 70s,80s, and early 90s were quiet, and 1995-present represents another active cycle.
In terms of intensity, there is some evidence that hurricanes in some ocean basins have grown stronger. I will discuss in a later post.
2) AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) is the real mcCoy. Sorry. Moving beyond this question, what is important is determining its precise severity and what we can do about it. There is not that much debate in the academic world going on about whether AGW is real or not. Rather, the debates focus on practical matters like how much temperatures will warm and whether that really will be enough to melt the icecaps, overturn dissolved CO2, increase hurricane strength, etc. And believe me, it is one heck of a debate…