WeatherTiger breaks down impacts on Tropical Storm Bertha in Gulf

Good afternoon, everyone. This is Dr. Ryan Trueschild of WeatherTiger.com, and I've got the very first live video forecast of the year for a tropical system. Unfortunately, it's not all that serious of a system. It's Tropical Depression II in the northeastern Gulf. So, this is really not a cause for alarm or concern, but it is a rainmaker, and it will have some impacts on our weather across the central Gulf Coast, eastern Gulf Coast, and the state of Florida through midweek. So, I'm going to walk you through all of what those impacts are going to be. I'll wait just a little bit for the audience to come in, and then I'll get right into the forecast. For those just joining, I'm Dr. Ryan Trueschild of WeatherTiger, and in just a minute, I'm going to get into our forecast for Tropical Depression II, the rain, wind, and surge impacts across Florida and the Gulf Coast. I'll be getting to that in just a minute. It's about another 30 seconds or so. Okay, let's get to it. I'm Dr. Ryan Trueschild, and this is Tropical Depression II, the second tropical cyclone of the 2026 hurricane season, both of which have been in the Gulf. First was Tropical Storm Arthur in the northwest Gulf, and now the northeast Gulf is getting in on the act in July. This storm developed yesterday from InVest 91L, a convective blob that moved off the coast of Florida early in the and perhaps soon will be becoming Tropical Storm Bertha. So let's take a look at the key messages from the National Hurricane Center's 11 a.m. forecast advisory. The first point is that this depression is expected to slowly strengthen over the next couple of days, could bring tropical storm conditions to portions of the Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle into southeastern Louisiana. There's a storm surge watch in effect for eastern Louisiana and coastal Mississippi, some of those surge-prone parts of the coast there. In the western Gulf, NHC wants you to keep monitoring the progress of the storm. The watches that are in effect now may be extended further west later today or tomorrow. And finally, NHC wants you to be aware that there is the potential for some flash flooding locally, especially along the Gulf Coast with this system. So I'm going to walk you through all of the wind, rain, surge, and tornado impacts of the storm. First, this is the 11 a.m. forecast cone with the 2 p.m. intermediate advisory position marked on it. The center of Tropical Depression 2 is about 120 miles south of Panama City in the Florida Panhandle. Maximum sustained winds are 35 miles an hour. It needs to have 39 mile an hour sustained winds to become a tropical storm. When it does so, it'll be named Bertha. Movement has been quite slow over the past few days. The system's really been meandering. It's just starting to angle northwest at less than five miles an hour this afternoon. And the NHC forecast track has this slow north or west movement continuing into midweek, which should bring it along or near the central Gulf Coast by Wednesday. So very quickly, if we look at what the models are showing for this storm, this is the intensity guidance. This gray line here, that's the official forecast from the NHC. The other colored lines are different models. And you know, the NHC forecasts show some gradual strengthening over the next 36 to 48 hours, but only to a low to moderate tropical storm. We're not talking about really any potential for Tropical Depression 2 to become a hurricane here. And all the models basically show that TD2 will intensify a little bit, but not all that much. The track forecast, all the models are in decent agreement here with a little bit of split once we get out two days or so. All of them kind of take the storm gradually northwest for the next 36, 48 hours. Some of them then have it continue westward along the central Gulf Coast towards Louisiana and eventually Texas. And another cluster of models kind of wash it out here near Mobile or Pensacola. Now the reason we're not expecting there to be any significant intensification here is twofold. One, wind shear. It's pretty robust. 20, 25 knots of wind shear out there right now. That's pretty strong wind shear. It's enough to prevent rapid intensification and keep any strengthening in check. And the other reason is there's just not a lot of moisture across the eastern Gulf of Mexico, kind of at the mid-levels of the atmosphere, one to three miles up. These 50% or so relative humidity numbers, they're okay. They're not great. You know, we like to see that because shear plus dry air means a really tough time for storms to intensify. If we look at water vapor imagery, we can see both of these things in play. This is imagery that shows how much moisture is in the atmosphere a few miles up. These oranges and yellows are drier air. So you can see here's our tropical depression generating some convection. But these orange and yellow pockets here to the east of the storm and to the north and northwest of the storm, that's some drier air that's getting kind of sucked into the circulation here. You can also see that the center of circulation is right about here, but most of the convection is on the south side of the storm. And that's because there's northerly wind shear. We have stronger winds aloft, blowing from north to south and keeping those deeper thunderstorms on the south side of the storm. So that's a good thing because we're on the north side of the storm, so the impacts are lighter where there's less convection. Now, if we take a look at one scenario for model guidance, this is the European model. This is what the storm looks like right about now. These brown areas are drier air aloft. Green areas are more moisture aloft. There's the center of circulation. And as we go forward with time, the European model has that northwest drift here tomorrow afternoon. We've got a storm approaching the western Florida panhandle, but it's not all that strong. And as we move forward into early Wednesday, we can see that we're really kind of losing the low pressure area of the storm in the model. It's weakening because you can see this drier air is starting to kind of overspread the circulation center. Those winds aloft are getting stronger. The drier air is getting sucked into the circulation. And if we really roll it out to Thursday and Friday, there's really nothing much left of this storm later in the week. It kind of washes out along the central gulf coast. So that's the forecast. You know, there's really not a lot of upside for intensity here. Again, no risk of this becoming a hurricane. We're talking about a weak and disorganized tropical storm at most approaching the western Florida panhandle or central gulf coast. So let's look at what's going on out there right now and what does that mean for our forecast? Well, this is the current radar across the state of Florida. Here's the center of tropical depression 2. You can see it spinning around out there, but not a lot of rainfall actually near the center of circulation. Most of the rainfall is kind of beyond radar range in this southern part of the storm. And then we have some bands on the northern and eastern side of the storm too that are rolling through central Florida, the nature coast, big bend, and the eastern part of the panhandle. Plenty of rainfall inland, some light rain going on right now in Tallahassee. And honestly, what you see is what you get here. The areas that are getting rainfall now, we're going to be seeing rainfall periodically for the next 36 to 48 hours. So here's again that European model. This is right now. Each hour we're going to step it forward with time and you can see that area of low pressure drifting northwest. Here it is tomorrow morning, a little bit closer to Panama City. We're continuing to see some precipitation along the Florida Gulf Coast between Tampa, nature coast, up through the panhandle, and some rainfall encroaching on Mobile, eastern Louisiana as well. We step it out to the Tuesday evening. Again, that northwestern drift is continuing. We're starting to dry out across west central Florida, eastern part of the big bend, still getting some rainfall across the central and western panhandle, eastern Louisiana, and the Mississippi and Mobile areas of Alabama. And then as we go forward to Wednesday morning, the system is starting to weaken as it approaches land, but it's still producing rainfall along the central Gulf Coast. And that's going to add up to rainfall totals generally on the order of anywhere from two to four inches here in southeastern Louisiana as well as the immediate panhandle Gulf Coast. Those are the areas that are going to be seeing heavier and steadier rainfall. Inland though, I-10 and north, maybe an inch or two of rainfall over the next three or four days. In general, that's also true for Mississippi and Alabama Gulf Coast and areas kind of west of New Orleans in Louisiana. As I showed earlier, with that sheer increasing and the drier air overspreading the circulation Wednesday and Thursday, even if some remnants of the system makes it out to western Louisiana or Texas, I don't think it'll be putting down very much rainfall as it does. So, you know, one to two inches of rainfall, that's not really a big deal. If an area sees locally higher totals of five or more inches, that could be a flooding concern. So, keep an eye on that. But again, I don't think it's going to be any kind of a widespread flooding situation across the Florida panhandle or eastern Louisiana. Turning our attention to the winds, this is what we've seen so far in terms of wind observations. This is current radar. Each of these numbers is the top wind gusts that we've seen so far across central and northern Florida. It's not impressive. There's a couple of 40 to 45 mile an hour wind gusts interspersed here. Tampa Airport saw a 45 mile an hour wind gust. Alligator Point also coming in at 45. But most of the stations along the coast, you know, 25 to 35 mile an hour top wind gusts. Nothing really to worry about there. This is the European model's estimates for the maximum wind gusts that's going to happen at any point during the next two or three days. And these areas that are outlined here in yellow and orange, those are our parts of the coastline where we may see coastal wind gusts in some of those heavier bands and squalls of 40, maybe up to 50 miles an hour. And I would also include that western part of the Florida panhandle coastline too in this. Inland, you know, in those heavier bands, those heavier squalls, could you see a gust up to 40 miles an hour? Sure you could. But it's not going to be a widespread damaging wind event by any means. Probably the most impactful, you know, reason to watch the winds is that it will actually have some impact on tide levels, especially across the Big Bend and Appalachee Bay, as well as elsewhere further west across the Gulf Coast. So this is the European model. Again, we're going to step it forward every hour out in time over the next couple days. And these areas that are in green, those are the areas where we're seeing winds out of the south at 20, 25 knots, you know, a couple hundred miles worth of fetch out of the south or southeast pointing to the coast. And that continues into Wednesday morning. Here's Wednesday morning as the system may be drifting towards land along the central Gulf Coast. We're still getting those 20 to 30 mile an hour winds out of the south onshore winds into the panhandle coastline. And because of that, that is going to cause a mild increase in our tide levels across the panhandle coastline, generally on the order of one to two feet. Could be some locally higher two to three feet totals due to local bathymetry, the way the coastline kind of lines up here in Appalachee Bay. There is a storm surge watch in effect for the Alabama to Florida border across eastern Louisiana. That is just in case this storm goes further west, tracks a bit south of these areas, and we get winds out of the east kind of pushing water into those sensitive coastlines of Alabama, Mississippi, and eastern Louisiana. So heads up in those areas. It may or may not happen, but there's a storm surge watch in effect. So it's something you want to be prepared for for Mobile, Gulfport, and across eastern Louisiana. Final threat, just to mention, this is not a big threat, but we always do watch out for the risk of tornadoes whenever there are outer bands of a tropical depression, storm, or hurricane crossing land. And National Weather Service in Tallahassee is highlighting a little bit of a coastal tornado threat here in Appalachee and the Big Bend. Again, this is not going to be a tornado outbreak or widespread tornadoes, but it's easy to get a quick spin up of some of the bands that come through and reach the coast. So here's the current radar, and just you want to watch whenever there's one of these little stronger cells within the broader area of rainfall. You know, anytime that hits the coast, that could spin up quickly and put down a short-lived tornado. So it's always wise to have a means of receiving emergency weather warnings from the National Weather Service with you whenever we're in one of these kind of tropical events, even though this one is not a big deal. So I'm going to wrap it up there. This is final visible satellite imagery. Look at Tropical Depression 2 and in general, its wind, rain, and surge impacts are going to be modest, especially compared with some of the storms we've dealt with in North Florida and the Gulf Coast over the past 10 years. And let's hope that this is as bad as it gets in 2026. I am hopeful. All right, I'm going to sign off for now. I'm Dr. Ryan Trueslid of weathertiger.com. Thanks for watching and keep watching the skies.