Good morning! There will be several areas to watch in the tropical Atlantic this week and, incidentally, several of these are very close to Florida (see the NHC 48-hour outlook at the top; yellow = low chance of development, orange = medium chance of development). Two of the areas are located along an old frontal boundary over the southeast, as we talked about last week. This is the same front that is partly responsible for our very unsettled weather pattern over the last several days. The third area is located near the Leeward Islands in the eastern Caribbean; this wave, though, is experiencing high wind shear and is struggling now. The wave to watch, though, is the one located south of Cuba in the northwest Caribbean.
Right now, shear over this wave is light and it is located in the deepest, warmest part of the Caribbean. That said, none of our forecast models really ramp up the strength/organization of this wave until it gets into the Gulf of Mexico and, even still, only get it to a tropical storm (except for the Canadian model we look at -- which implies a hurricane headed toward the upper Texas coast later this week). With light wind shear forecast to prevail near this wave over the next few days, I don't see any reason why this won't become our next depression/storm and, once developed, won't intensify steadily once out over the Gulf. Fortunately, Florida remains protected by the strong high pressure area over the eastern United States; so the wave in the NW Caribbean will be forced into the western Gulf just like Alex.
More coming as the week goes on with this system.
Brian
