The National Hurricane Center (NHC) is monitoring a new disturbance in the Atlantic Basin just east of Central America; with time, this area could become a tropical cyclone. While there is a medium chance that this area will become a tropical cyclone over the next 5 days, there are no other areas expected to become tropical cyclones this week.
The area of concern today is a broad area of disturbed weather located over the southwestern Caribbean Sea. This disturbance is associated with a surface trough of low pressure in the region. According to the NHC, some slow development is possible, and a tropical depression could form by late this week if the system remains over water. The disturbance is expected to move northwestward near the coasts of Nicaragua and Honduras during that time. Even if tropical cyclone formation doesn’t occur, periods of very heavy rainfall across portions of eastern Nicaragua and eastern Honduras are possible later this week.
Right now, the NHC says there’s a 10% chance of tropical cyclone formation over the next 24 hours; those odds grow to 40% over the next 5 days.
The Atlantic Hurricane Season began on June 1 and continues through to the end of November. The first storm of the season was Alex. It brought heavy rain to south Florida before organizing into a tropical storm in the Atlantic; it eventually brought gusty winds and heavy rain to Bermuda before dissipating over the Central Atlantic. The next tropical storm to be named in the Atlantic will be called Bonnie.
