A tropical system in the Caribbean Sea? In November? Affecting cities in Louisiana such as Lafayette, Lake Charles, and Morgan City? Perposterous. You wouldn’t be out of line if you thought that.
You could also be waist-deep in flood water like a large part of South Louisiana was on Wednesday. Those heavy downpours were caused by remnant moisture from another tropical system that formed in the Caribbean and then moved into the Gulf of Mexico and “dissipated”.
Yesterday’s deluge that put most of Lafayette Parish at risk of flash flooding on Wednesday can be directly attributed to the remnants of Hurricane Rafael. And while Rafael was a bit of an anomaly a new storm forming in the Caribbean Sea could bring a similar fate to portions of the Gulf Coast next week.
The National Hurricane Center has officially designated the system as Potential Tropical Cyclone 19. I think by later today we’ll be calling it Tropical Storm Sara. The system has formed very close to where Rafael began earlier this month. And the storm’s trajectory is not exactly that of Rafael but we’ll call it close.
PTC 19 is expected to move further to the west than Rafael did. It is also not expected to become a major hurricane as Rafael did before making landfall on the coast of Cuba. PTC 19’s path should carry it over the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico over the weekend…