ORLANDO, Fla. – You can tell the peak of hurricane season is quickly approaching when the Atlantic tries to produce tropical systems despite being categorized as “hostile” or “pretty unfavorable.”

There comes a point where background conditions can only do so much given the time of year.

While we aren’t anticipating a huge swarm in the tropics right away, the trends continue to point toward an even greater likelihood we see increasing action right after Sept. 11.

While it’s still possible the season gives us another named storm or two before the favorable conditions settle in, whatever does try to spin out there across the basin has some work to do. Let’s break it down together.

What’s so ‘hostile’ about the Atlantic?

We just had a fairly strong pulse of the Madden Julian Oscillation come across the tropics. That helped to spark, and likely rapidly intensify, Erin during its time spent north of the Greater Antilles. That phase has since come and gone and now that force is focused mainly over Thailand, Indonesia, Australia and eastern sections of the Indian Ocean back toward the Western Pacific.

With the atmosphere, what goes up always has to come down somewhere. So while the Pacific sees a nudge in its rising motion, the Atlantic ends up suppressed. We start to realize more of a sinking motion from top to bottom in the atmosphere.

That’s when you start to see an increase in low and mid level wind shear, as well as more dry air building in.

It may come across as surprising to you, but alongside these incidental pieces of the tropical puzzle we talk about through the hurricane season, the simple fact of Earth’s tilt and orbit around the sun is what also produces the storms we track east to west out there.

We’re for sure into peak summer and coming out of it at that. This means we’re receiving the bulk of the sun during the daylight hours. Because of Earth’s tilt, we see less of it during our winter months and the same goes for the tropics. Right now, they’re directly beneath all that incoming sunlight and heat, which is why we get the shift in where our tropical waves move about.

That’s why, regardless of how “bad” the state of the atmosphere and water temperatures may be in the Atlantic where it matters most for development, you’ll still see waves attempt to grow a little.

The National Hurricane Center shows us that, after highlighting an area for a 20% chance of formation through next week as one of these tropical waves comes off Africa.

So wait – what’s the second spot we’re watching?

Despite the wave being our only identified feature through the tropics right now, I’m also closely watching what occurs off both of Central Florida’s coastlines. We’ve had some pretty powerful cold fronts coming down, unseasonably strong.

As a result, our computer models tend to struggle some when things go into unusual territory. There’s a very low potential we see another rogue spin-up along a leftover front either to our west in the Gulf or toward our east over the Gulf stream current of warmer water.

This wouldn’t be out of the ordinary and actually par the course since we’ve had Chantal and Dexter already come together thanks to the same type of set up. Computer models show broad rotation near the Florida peninsula, and nevertheless we’ll still see a huge hike upward in our rain chances Labor Day weekend and into next week.

The question from there is how far south the front comes down, and does it get the chance to percolate over the water?

That same front, even if it no piece of it tries to develop, will dump some hefty rain totals on us through the upcoming holiday weekend and into the first couple days of next week.

This is all thanks to the set up left behind and more or less provoked by Hurricane Erin several days earlier.

Then from there, we may see one more attempt or two in the greater tropical Atlantic before the peak of the season really tries to stretch its legs. I am fairly confident after Sept. 10 and especially Sept. 15 that conditions over the Atlantic will start to reverse and we’ll see what this hurricane season truly has in store for us.