Hurricane Safety and Preparedness

Tropical Storm Arlene 2023: An Odd Southward Moving Gulf Storm

At a Glance

Arlene is located in the southeastern Gulf of Mexico.
This system won't last long and is moving away from the U.S. Gulf Coast.

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Tropical Storm Arlene was a short-lived Gulf of Mexico storm that teased Florida residents and kicked off the official start to Hurricane Season.

The system was designated Tropical Depression Two based on a June 1st Hurricane Hunters mission. Another mission early the following day found tropical-storm-force winds, allowing the National Hurricane Center to upgrade the depression to Tropical Storm Arlene.

Arlene was an odd southward-moving tropical storm in the Gulf. It was between an expansive ridge of high pressure over the Central U.S. and a weak trough over the adjacent Atlantic, which helped push the system equatorward.

Arlene was a well-sheared system that probably shouldn't have been able to blossom, but did.

A quiet disturbance moved northeastward through the Gulf into the waters just off the western Florida panhandle in the last few days of May. This was an area that was hostile to tropical cyclone development: Strong west-to-east winds over the Gulf and cooler-than-average waters.

But those relatively cooler waters may have allowed cyclonegenesis. Waters were just warm enough and skies aloft were just cool enough for thunderstorm growth, but not so much that robust thunderstorms would grow up into the jet stream.

Arlene and its pre-genesis depression were able to fester literally under the effects of the strongest winds aloft. Should the storm have been any stronger, its cloud tops would have been any stronger.

As the system moved southward and into warmer water, shear increased around the storm and cloud tops began to be removed from Arlene. The system weakened in the southern Gulf

It happened one year ago. If this early occurring storm sounds like déjà vu, it's not your imagination.

In early 2022, a tropical disturbance tracked across South Florida producing flooding rain before it finally became Tropical Storm Alex east of the Florida coast.

Unlike Arlene, what eventually became Alex had some remnant moisture and spin from a former hurricane, Agatha, in the Eastern Pacific Basin.

Alex eventually overcame both dry air and wind shear to become 2022's first storm of the season.

Track history of Tropical Storm Alex in 2022. The black line shows the time during which it was classified as Potential Tropical Cyclone One, before it became Alex.
(Track data: NOAA/NHC)

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