Tropics Alert - Double Trouble Possible Next Week

It is a good thing that most meteorologists have two eyes in their head as we will need both of them to track two tropical weather disturbances.

Tropical Storm Katia, currently in the central Atlantic, will continue to move to the west-northwest over the next several days and is destined to strengthen into the next Major Hurricane of the season.  Expectations are that Katia will re-curve well east of the U.S. and possibly threaten Bermuda before weakening as she heads back out over the colder waters of the North Atlantic.  The track of Katia is expected to remain steady as a cold front moving through the eastern U.S. this weekend should help to block a westward shift in the storm, but that was also a possibility with Irene who ended up doing her own thing than what was forecast 5 days out.  So we need to keep one eye on Katia.

The second disturbance worth watching is currently near Cancun, Mexico.  All indications point to a slow strengthening of this system this weekend with a Tropical Depression or Tropical Storm (Lee) forming by Sunday or Monday (9/4-5) somewhere off the Texas Gulf Coast.  There is fairly good agreement that this will happen, unfortunately after Monday there is no agreement on where the storm will go.  Our best estimate is that it will follow the middle track and move along the Texas Gulf Coast before making landfall somewhere near Houston onWednesday (9/7) or Thursday (9/8).  The primary threat from "Lee" would be flooding due to the slow moving nature of the storm.   At this point, the track of the storm does not look like it will bring large amounts of rain to central Texas but will instead drench only the coastal areas, so the drought in much of Texas will continue.

Impacts to retailers and consumers are expected to be minimal with increasing chances for rainfall in East Texas hampering store traffic.  As long as Katia remains well offshore its impact will also be minimal.

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