By Clint Thompson
Last week it was Hurricane Debby. Ernesto has developed in the Atlantic Ocean, though it’s forecast to move northward and avoid the Southeast.
What’s next? According to Pam Knox, University of Georgia Extension agricultural climatologist, she would not be surprised if additional storms start developing in the Atlantic Ocean, especially considering how warm the ocean water is.
According to Pam Knox:
“The ocean temperatures are unbelievably warm. They’re as warm as they usually are two months from now. The ocean temperatures being warm is already there. We’re getting some waves off of Africa already,” Knox said. “It’s not unusual this time of year to have that dust coming off of Africa. Usually that dies down by early August.
“Once that goes away and the ocean temperatures being so warm and having those waves coming off of Africa, it would not surprise me if all of a sudden, we got a whole bunch of (storms) in pretty short durations. We don’t know where they’re going to go, and we don’t know how strong they’re going to be. Some of them may stay out over the ocean and not really affect us here in the Southeast. But I do expect that once we get past this period of really dusty conditions that things could develop pretty quickly.
“Usually we say by mid-August that things will start to ramp up. If you look at the pattern of when the storms occur, mid-August is when (they) really start to turn upward.”