First Hurricane of Atlantic Season Forming

Wednesday, October 07, 2026

Tropical Depression Nine has formed in the southwestern Gulf and is forecast to become a hurricane, potentially bringing significant flooding rain and strong winds to parts of the northern Gulf Coast and South late this week.

Posted by REDIAL at 05:31 PM | 4 COMMENTS | permalink | Comment on This Entry |

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Forecasters were monitoring a tropical depression in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday. If the system develops as they predict, it would become Tropical Storm Isaias and eventually the first hurricane of the 2026 Atlantic season.

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-- The New York Times (@nytimes.com) 8:40 PM Â· Oct 6, 2026

Comments

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... That will make Isaias the first hurricane of an Atlantic season squashed by El Niño. ...

Looks like a Cat 2 when it makes landfall.

#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-10-07 02:56 PM | Reply

Now officially a tropical storm.

www.nhc.noaa.gov

#2 | Posted by REDIAL at 2026-10-07 05:23 PM | Reply

Looks like a Cat 2 when it makes landfall.
#1 | Posted by LampLighter

This could be a chance for Google to score a win for their AI model. The official forecast is cat 2 but Google's model predicts Cat 3 which would put it into the "major storm" category.

#3 | Posted by johnny_hotsauce at 2026-10-07 05:33 PM | Reply

@#3 ... This could be a chance for Google to score a win for their AI model. ...

From what I've seen, the NWS is also looking at and testing AI weather models.

Fortunately, though, the NWS is a bit more conservative in their adoption of new models than Google might be.

If the Google AI model shows itself to be correct, that would be good. But it would be just one more data point in the evaluation of AI weather forecasting models.

#4 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-10-07 06:50 PM | Reply