It only took one month for the 2021 hurricane season to set its first record with the development of Tropical Storm Elsa, now the earliest arriving "E" storm on record.
Elsa won't pose much of an issue for Acadiana with the track keeping it in the eastern Gulf of Mexico with impacts felt through the Caribbean and the Florida Peninsula.
Despite the announcement that the storm had hit the criteria to be considered a tropical storm, there's little change to the National Hurricane Center's forecast.
There's little uncertainty in the forecast over the next couple of days, but diverging models around the day 3 mark means that confidence in the long term forecast drops significantly.
Just glancing at some of the models it looks like the NHC is leaning on the western edge of possibilities, which is good news for Acadiana as it looks like we'll be able to sit this one out.
Intensity forecasts also remain uncertain as there are a number of factors that may be working against the storm over the next couple of days.
Elsa is being steered by a subtropical ridge to the north, so the break down of that ridge will be the key thing to look for when trying to determine the turn to the north.
Most models seem to think that will be towards the end of the weekend or early next week, but again there remains a considerable amount of uncertainty.
There's a considerable amount of dust in the Atlantic and Elsa seems to have found the most favorable spot for tropical development, however, it needs to move quick enough to outrun dust to the east but by moving too fast it'll move into a spot less favorable with poorer structure.
As stated earlier Acadiana likely won't have anything to worry about with this storm, but if you have interests in Florida (particularly south Florida) you'll want to monitor the storm closely.
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