"The system looming over toasty water just offshore on Monday was small but potentially potent."
"Tropical Storm Warning flags were flying today on the Gulf Coast of southeast Texas and southeast Louisiana ahead of the expected arrival on Tuesday of Tropical Depression Five (TD 5), which was designated a tropi�cal depression at 2 p.m. EDT Monday. As of 11 a.m. EDT Monday, TD 5 was predicted by the National Hurricane Center to become a tropical storm before its center reaches the Texas-Louisiana coast on Tuesday afternoon. The next name on the Atlantic list is Edouard.
Satellite imagery and Hurricane Hunter transects on Monday morning showed TD 5 to have a closed circulation, albeit a weak and elongated one, with top sustained winds of only 35 mph (55 km/h). As seen in the image at top, TD 5’s cloud shield was largely focused on its south side. TD 5 is also an unusually small system, with a compact core of showers and thunderstorms that’s smaller than some Great Plains supercell thunderstorms. However, small tropical systems can both intensify and weaken more quickly than big ones.
Very dry air surrounds TD 5, with midlevel relative humidity below 50%; this is the main obstacle to its strengthening (and also a big reason why it’s such a small system). However, TD 5 is traversing unusually warm waters for the end of August: Sea surface temperatures of 31 degrees Celsius (88 degrees Fahrenheit) along its path are about 1°C (1.8°F) above average. (See Fig. 1 below for a sense of how unusual this is). These toasty waters, combined with light wind shear, may give TD 5 a brief window for potential development that could be rapid. The SHIPS statistical model on Monday morning gave TD 5 a 21% chance of becoming a higher-end tropical storm with sustained winds of 65 mph (105 km/h) by Tuesday morning, a few hours before expected landfall. Short-range intensity models may not have a solid handle on TD 5 before it forms a more robust circulation (assuming it does)."
Irene Sans, Bob Henson, and Jeff Masters report for Yale Climate Connections August 27, 2026.
SEE ALSO:
"Tropical Storm Dolly Forms In The Atlantic" (Yale Climate Connections)
