Cristobal already a tropical storm for record books; get ready for rain | WeatherTiger forecast

Early summer is full of predictable change in the natural world. The days grow muggy and long. Awkward teenage geese line the banks of retention ponds. Jeeps shed parts of their exoskeleton. Nature is healing.

Tropical weather responds to these primordial rhythms as well; as hurricane season begins, the initial focus of historical development is in the Gulf of Mexico and western Caribbean. Since 1950, a tropical storm forms there in June in about two out of three years.

However, because it is 2020, the tropical seas are already packed with storms, surely as our inboxes are clogged with unread messages like “TO OUR FANS: How the Red Hot Chili Peppers are responding to COVID-19.”

A tropical depression promptly emerged in the Gulf on Day 1 of the official season, and on Wednesday morning, Tropical Storm Cristobal made landfall in southern Mexico with maximum sustained winds of around 60 mph. Cristobal is the earliest third named storm on record, beating Tropical Storm Colin’s record of June 5th from 2016.

Cristobal has currently edged inland over the western Yucatan peninsula, and will move little for the next two days. The storm is embedded in a broader circulation known as a Central American Gyre, and as such, some erratic movement is expected through Friday as additional flooding rains continue in far southern Mexico and Guatemala.

On Friday, Cristobal will begin to move north or north-northeast across the southern Gulf into a weakness between two ridges, one over the Southwest U.S. and the other in the western Atlantic.

On this path, Cristobal will approach the Central Gulf Coast late in the weekend. The high pressure over the Southwest will be shifting east into the Mississippi Valley at that time, which will bend Cristobal to the northwest as it nears the coast. Based on motion trends, I think Cristobal may slip a little further northeast than currently projected before that pivot occurs.

This targets eastern Louisiana for Sunday or Monday landfall, with an uncertainty interval of Houston to Mobile.

Landfall intensity is heavily dependent on the next 48 hours.

The flat terrain of the Yucatan peninsula won’t cause Cristobal to dissipate, but spending the next two days mostly over land will broaden the circulation and make it likely to remain a sprawling mid-range tropical storm. If Cristobal spends less time over land than expected or reforms to the north soon, it may retain a stronger convective core, and low-end Category 1 Hurricane strength is a possibility.

While winds along the immediate Central Gulf Coast of 40 to 60 mph are possible, as typical of early season storms, Cristobal’s most significant impacts will be heavy rainfall along and well east of the track of the center.

Expect widespread 2- to- 4-inch accumulations with local totals up to 8 inches between coastal central Louisiana and the Florida Big Bend. Rainfall is likely to begin Saturday afternoon, be heaviest and steadiest on Sunday, and diminish on Monday in the Panhandle, though that timing is subject to change.

Some modest surge and coastal flooding impacts are expected along the central and eastern Gulf Coast.

Overall, Cristobal will likely become the first U.S. tropical storm landfall of 2020 by Monday. June tropical storm landfalls along the U.S. Gulf Coast occur about two out of every five years.

However, targeting the Central Gulf is a bit unusual, as early June storms typically favor the Florida Gulf Coast during “Steinhatchee season," so called because June storms have been known to exhibit a bizarre attraction to the Gulf fishing village.

On the off-chance that Cristobal makes landfall as a hurricane, it would be the earliest to do so since Hurricane Alma struck the Big Bend on June 9, 1966.

Elsewhere, there are no other areas of disturbed weather, and additional tropical development is not expected over the next 8-10 days.

However, a generally favorable outflow regime for tropical disturbances will persist in the western Caribbean through at least mid-month, so the inexorable rhythms of tropical life dictate that "Steinhatchee season" may not be over yet.

Keep watching the skies.

Ryan Truchelut is co-founder and chief meteorologist at WeatherTiger, a Tallahassee-based start-up providing advanced weather and climate analytics, forensic meteorology and expert witness services, and forecasting solutions to enterprises large and small. Get in touch at ryan@weathertiger.com.