Good afternoon! Convection has increased through the morning and now into the early afternoon south of the center of low pressure associated with former Tropical Depression 5. The system is now centered a little southwest of Panama City in the Gulf of Mexico. The northern side is virtually void of thunderstorms for the time being, though; it is feeling the effects of both proximity to land and some light northeasterly wind shear that is pushing the thunderstorms to the south of the center. The idea here continues to be for the low to become a tropical depression again and, depending on how long it can spend over water (and how far south it gets), possibly a tropical storm.
Virtually ideal conditions are in place aloft for development with a strong ridge of high pressure allowing for outflow (as air ascends from the ground it must push outward at the top of the atmosphere in order for the process of strengthening to continue). Water temperatures are more than adequate for strengthening as the storm follows the westerly steering currents toward southeast Lousiana.
Elsewhere in the tropics, there are two waves in the Caribbean -- one in the southwest and the other near the Leeward & Windward Islands. A couple of our models try to put this energy together in a few days in the western Caribbean and move it into the Bay of Campeche (west of Cancun).
Farther out, our models have been insistent on the development of the first long-tracked Cape Verde system of the year. The wave associated with this is now emerging off the west coast of Africa, but at a fairly high latitude (around 16-19 north). There is quite a bit of dry air/Saharan dust well east of this system, but I don't think this will impede development much and we likely will have a tropical depression forming by the end of the week. Because this wave starts so far north and several areas of upper level low pressure are expected to move through the western and central Atlantic, most of our models have this recurving out to sea well east of the United States. It's still much too early to say anything definitively, but the general pattern would favor a recurve (as long as the system gets strong enough, fast enough).
Most of our models have at least another wave developing off of Africa this weekend/early next week that might be worth watching. Either way, the hurricane season appears ready to really get going. So far, it's been an average season thus far (3 named storms, 1 hurricane).
Brian
