Tropical Storm Joaquin Strengthens in Atlantic

July 13, 2015 – Tropical Storm Claudette forms in the Atlantic. This has had the effect of shifting the best convection southwest, away from the center of circulation, and will continue to do so for at least the next 12-24 hours. NASA’s Aqua satellite and NOAA’s GOES satellite both captured images of the slightly elongated storm near the Bahamas. The storm’s movement has also slowed. Outflow off the top of the system is ensuring that the storm doesn’t collapse in on itself. In the image, Joaquin continued to appear slightly elongated which is attributed to vertical wind shear.

Looking at the various models and extrapolating what is going to happen with this system has made things … unclear. “Confidence in the details of the track forecast, especially beyond 48 hours, is extremely low”.

Tropical Storm Joaquin will threaten the United States late this week, but there is a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the storm’s track.

In terms of wind, a persistent and gusty onshore flow may result in pockets of isolated outages in eastern Massachusetts later this week, though the extent of how high the gusts will be is still uncertain at this time. This strengthening should begin on Wednesday and continue as the storm meanders towards the Bahamas. NASA research has shown that storms that high in the troposphere (lowest layer of the atmosphere) have the capability to generate heavy rain.

And this is where things get tricky.

Mostly cloudy skies will take us through the rest of the morning.

Tropical Storm Joaquin may dump heavy rainfall in New Jersey in the next week or so.

However, computer forecast models are having trouble determining the strength of a low-pressure trough that is predicted to set up over the southeastern U.S, Brennan said.

On September 28, NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Depression 11 at 1:23 p.m. EDT and saw powerful thunderstorms east of the center (purple) with cloud top temperatures near -63F/-53C…