Cooler weather and clouds hang around

Good Wednesday morning everyone! We saw temperatures dip into the upper 50s in some spots. Columbus dipped down to 59, one degree shy of tying our old record low of 58! Things should warm up a tad more than yesterday as the cloud deck isn't as thick. You may be asking how I know the clouds aren't as dense... Well, let me show you! Here's a sounding from Peachtree City, GA from 8 AM this morning:

Notice the red line, temperature profile, and the green line, dew point profile, are very close together near the surface. When these two lines are close together, there are likely clouds throughout that layer. To show you proof of the clouds I'm talking about; here's the visible satellite image from this morning:

The clouds are starting to dissipate just a bit and with the heating of the day we'll see them clear out of the sky! This will allow temperatures to creep into the mid 70s rather than the mid 60s we saw yesterday afternoon.

Tropics: 
We have a few tropical disturbances we're keeping an eye on. The first is Hurricane Katia which is forecast to pass between Bermuda and the United States. The affects Katia will have for the US are strong rip current, high surf (surf's up dude!) and minor coastal flooding.

The second tropical entity we are keeping an eye on is Tropical Depression #14.

It's looking pretty decent on satellite this morning and I anticipate it to become our next tropical storm of the season, Tropical Storm Maria. The upper atmosphere is conducive for development over the next 24 to 48 hours, but beyond that it will have to deal with some wind shear. We'll have to watch out for Maria and its potential impacts for the Leeward Islands and Puerto Rico.

Another area of convection is firing up in the Bay of Campeche. It has been designated Invest 96L:

It's firing up along an old frontal boundary; in fact, this is part of the energy left behind by Lee earlier this week! We'll have to watch this one closely as the Euro and CMC bring this towards the Louisiana coastline, while the GFS takes it into Mexico. Here's the "spaghetti" plots of the models: 

Here's my thinking on Invest 96L: As long as the dry air to the north of Invest 96L, dry air from the Texas drought, manages to stay to the north and doesn't get mixed into 96L then we'll see our next depression of the season later tonight or tomorrow morning. The ultimate location of the low level center(LLC) WILL BE IMPERATIVE! If it develops a little further to the north, more in the southern Gulf than the Bay of Campeche, it will track to the north and influence the northern Gulf Coast. If it develops in the heart of the Bay of Campeche, it will not get picked up by the trough progged to move through later this week. Right now, I'm thinking it will drift north initially and get left behind by the incoming trough and meander west into northern Mexico. This forecast is fairly low confidence as we don't have a LLC yet, just putting different scenarios out there!

Thanks!

David Reese