A small but vigorous tropical wave has moved across the Atlantic surrounded by large amounts of dry air. Even with unfavorable conditions of dry air the upper level winds have diminished enough over the past 36 hours that the trough of low pressure has shown persistent convection.

Invest 94L will continue to move WNW and conditions will remain only marginally conducive to see anymore development. The biggest impacts will be an increase in moisture and storm activity along its path and along the Florida coastline over the next several days.

Computer models are in very good agreement showing the disturbance paralleling the east coast of Florida as it is picked up by a digging upper level  trough moving into the eastern US by mid-week. This should keep the heaviest rains along the coast or just offshore.

For now, the disturbance has handled the dry air but as upper level winds increase as it begins to interact with the approaching trough conditions will not be conducive for development. This does start to signal the change in the season where tropical waves begin their trek across the Atlantic and we must watch for the development of these as the Atlantic waters warm and conditions become more ideal.

It was expected to be a Hurricane at landfall. It was expected to bring 15 to 20″ of flooding rains because of the slow moving storm. Overall, the forecasting for the storm was very good. If there is something you wanted to be wrong, it was that there would not be as much rain. Thankfully, that is what happened.

The forward speed of the storm determines how much rain will fall. This was a slow moving hurricane. So why did the rainfall amounts not add up? It was because Barry was a very malformed hurricane. Loads of dry air to the north of Barry and northerly wind shear kept much of the strong convection offshore as the center of Barry made landfall on Saturday. Then as the center continued to move inland it started to leave much of its energy still just offshore.

There still were some bands that caused flooding rains, but they were generally further west and more isolated. While Hurricane Barry did cause flooding, damage, and power outages, it will be remembered as a storm that spared the coast as it made landfall.

As the last of the rains wind down over Arkansas, the tropics are quiet once again.There are a number of tropical waves in the Atlantic and in the Caribbean, but none of them show any signs of development over the next 5 days.