{"id":385117,"date":"2026-08-30T06:40:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T06:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/385117\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T06:40:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T06:40:28","slug":"is-dolly-a-florida-hurricane-threat-odds-are-in-our-favor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/385117\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Dolly a Florida hurricane threat? Odds are in our favor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aug. 28, 2026, 11:20 a.m. ET<\/p>\n

As Hurricane Season 2026 limps into its alleged peak season primetime,<\/a> there is precisely one tropical disturbance in the Atlantic, Caribbean, or Gulf: A short-lived storm named Dolly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And while odds are minimal of an eventual threat to land from that system, close-to-zero chances are, I suppose, non-zero.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not much, but it\u2019s all there is.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That disturbance started out as Invest 96L<\/a>, a tropical wave churning westward across the eastern Tropical Atlantic between Cape Verde and the Lesser Antilles. The storm has been the proverbial pain in the liver just short of jaundice, generating decent thunderstorm activity around a broad area of rotation, but remaining too disorganized to merit tropical depression or storm status.<\/p>\n

But that’s changing. The National Hurricane Center began issuing advisories for Tropical Storm Dolly<\/a>, which has already faded back into a tropical wave.<\/a><\/p>\n

The storm will continue west-northwest at a brisk pace and should be in the vicinity of the northern Lesser Antilles by late this weekend. Beyond that time, the eventual fate of Dolly becomes unclear. There are two main possibilities, ranging from nothingburger to something to keep an eye on:<\/p>\n

Option 1: Brief Eastern Atlantic development, then dissipation<\/p>\n

The most straightforward scenario seemed like the most likely: the storm flops, like every other tropical wave this year.<\/p>\n

That outcome was backed by a preponderance of real-world and model evidence. The storm may look formidable from a distance, but high-resolution satellite imagery continues to show multiple low-level swirls fighting for dominance beneath the thunderstorms, hampering inflow and causing the disturbance to fritter away the most favorable environment it\u2019s going to encounter.<\/p>\n

By Friday, wind shear increased as Dolly races west-northwest at an unhealthy 20-25 mph, and the drier airmass surrounding the disturbance began to overspread the circulation and weaken the associated convection.<\/p>\n

Formerly bullish models started backing off on this storm once it hit the water, a late summer tradition since 2024; disturbances generally don\u2019t come back from that downtrend kiss of death, at least in the short-term. Next week, there shouldn\u2019t be much left of the storm to rebuild, and any remaining twist may never find a low-shear, high-moisture environment.<\/p>\n

Thus, I thought the most probable outcome is that the storm never would develop and merely spread higher rain chances and blustery winds wherever it washed out, but I was wrong.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Even though Dolly arrived briefly on the scene, it was a stoppable force encountering the immovable object of high wind shear near the Lesser Antilles. Most of the remaining minority of model ensemble members that developed Dolly weakened it back to a humble tropical disturbance before reaching the islands for this reason.<\/p>\n

Practically, the Eastern Atlantic short-lived storm scenario is the same as no development, but\u2026<\/p>\n

Option 2: Western Atlantic development and Dolly reborn<\/p>\n

\u2026it\u2019s worth considering the outside chance that Dolly might re-organize later next week, a possibility if it can pass through the higher wind shear zone and emerge northwest of Puerto Rico. If the system was to reform, it would reclaim the name Dolly as long as it originated directly from the remnants of Dolly 1.0.<\/p>\n

Such a scenario would, theoretically, pique our interest in Florida and Southeast U.S, and I give it a 25% chance of unfolding.<\/p>\n

Of course, that\u2019s many steps away from reality, and even a reconstituted Dolly may not pose a threat.<\/p>\n

Yet, should the storm remain north of the Caribbean shear axis, hang on to some kind of low-level rotation, and not be completely annihilated by dry air, ensemble models suggest that upper-level winds could be supportive for slow, eventual organization in the subtropical western Atlantic or even the Gulf.<\/p>\n

\"Spaghetti<\/p>\n

Water temperatures there are running above average, and with Dolly\u2019s forward speed expected to slow down starting Monday or Tuesday, there could be a mid- or late-week window for the disturbance to recover from its weekend encounter with dry air.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bankshot, but can\u2019t be ruled out. Steering currents are also tricky. The consensus of model guidance shows a weak dip in the jet stream in the west-central Atlantic, with an intermittent ridge of high pressure aloft over the Southeast through the first week of September.<\/p>\n

That means that on the off-chance Dolly does get it together in the western Atlantic, its next move could be to turn out-to-sea, keep moving west-northwest, or just meander for a while. That all depends on where a circulation consolidates and the relative strengths and locations of the ridge and trough, unknowable details beyond a week out.<\/p>\n

Check back next week, but don’t fret yet, Florida<\/p>\n

Overall, I would not be even a little concerned about Dolly at this stage, though I would check back early next week if you\u2019re in Florida or the Southeast.<\/p>\n

We should know more about the steering situation by then, as well as whether Dolly itself has been eradicated or merely decimated by shear and land interaction.<\/p>\n

WeatherTiger\u2019s real-time model of seasonal U.S. hurricane risks predicts well below average total landfall activity, but still suggests a greater than 50% chance of one or more continental U.S. hurricane impacts this year.<\/p>\n

I am not saying that Dolly will be a threat, but\u2026 a weirdo wave that bumbles into the subtropical western Atlantic, then forms closer to home is the kind of thing we do need to watch for during El Nin\u0303o.<\/p>\n

Thus, even though they have given us thankfully little to watch in 2026 and may well continue to do so, keep watching the skies.<\/p>\n

\"Ryan<\/p>\n

Dr. Ryan Truchelut is chief meteorologist at WeatherTiger, a Tallahassee company providing forensic meteorology expert witness, agricultural, and hurricane forecasting services. Email Truchelut at\u00a0Ryan@weathertiger.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(This forecast has been updated with the latest information).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aug. 28, 2026, 11:20 a.m. ET As Hurricane Season 2026 limps into its alleged peak season primetime, there…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[64,112356,8435,375,108244,383,8436,2029,39,307,379,232,234,233,34],"class_list":["post-385117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-accessmetered","tag-sourcetallahassee-democrat","tag-sstsnewshurricane","tag-sstsnhurricane","tag-tag2026-hurricane-season","tag-tagaccidents-disasters","tag-tagatmospheric-science","tag-tagfl-content-sharing-statewide","tag-tagflorida","tag-tagoverall-negative","tag-tagweather","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news","tag-typestory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}