Tropics heat up as Franklin moves ashore

The tropics have been heating up as Tropical Storm Franklin has moved ashore on the Yucatan Peninsula this morning.  Franklin continues to batter the region with heavy rains and high winds.  Current sustained winds are 60 mph with rainfall expected to cause significant flooding and flash flood conditions. A storm surge of 2-4 feet was expected and major evacuations have occurred in low lying communities in Mexico.   Tropical Storm Warnings continue from Belize City to the Gulf coast of the Yucatan at Sabancuy at this time.  Franklin is expected to move into the Gulf of Mexico later on today.

Tropical Storm Watches are in effect from Sabancuy to Puerto de Veracruz along the southern portion of the Gulf of Mexico.   Once in the gulf, Franklin is expected to intensify and as we mentioned on Sunday, Franklin is going to come very close to hurricane strength before making a second landfall in Mexico.  To account for this, hurricane Watches are in effect from Puerto de Veracruz north to Rio Panuco.  Some of this area will be downgraded to a Tropical Storm Warning as Franklin approaches, as the hurricane wind field will not be that big.  The large area is simply to take into account possible changes to the track.

As we have stated before, Franklin is not a threat to make landfall in the US.

Tropical Atlantic

In other news for the tropics a tropical wave roughly 1000 miles east of the Lesser Antilles continues to be disorganized at this hour.  Environmental conditions remain poor for development over the next couple of days.  Conditions begin to improve as this system moves north of the Lesser Antilles into the region around the Bahamas.  Some models have developed this system and bring a tropical risk to the east coast of the United States so we here at Firsthand Weather will be watching this system closely.

Robert Millette