It is still too early to say whether a tropical disturbance expected to form in the Gulf of Mexico this week could impact Alabama.

One of the reasons for this is that it has not even formed yet.

However, meteorologists believe that this will be the case. The storm could develop into a tropical depression or even strengthen it and move mainly northward over the course of the week.

“We will continue to closely monitor trends and urge residents and visitors across the Gulf Coast to continue monitoring the forecast in the coming days,” the National Weather Service in Mobile said in its weather forecast discussion Sunday morning.

Could it develop into a hurricane? A tropical storm? Will it even develop into one?

And where could it go?

According to the weather service, all of these questions remain unanswered until Sunday.

“Unfortunately, there remains great uncertainty regarding the strength, timing and trajectory of this system,” Mobile Weather Service meteorologists said in their forecast briefing on Sunday morning.

Why all the attention on something that hasn’t even happened yet?

Whenever a tropical disturbance moves into the Gulf of Mexico, it’s worth watching. And it’s just before the climatological peak of the hurricane season. And the conditions in the Gulf seem to favor anything that forms there, since there’s plenty of very warm water there for fuel and the wind shear is weaker.

The National Hurricane Center was closely monitoring the northwestern Caribbean and southern Gulf on Sunday. Meteorologists say there is a high probability (70 percent) that a tropical depression will form next week, likely in the southern Gulf.

A system must have a defined center and wind speeds of at least 63 km/h to be considered a tropical storm and receive a name. The next name on the 2024 Atlantic storm list is Helene.

Meteorologists saw signs of a developing disturbance on Sunday, and the weather service said something “trackable” could form by Monday night or Tuesday. And it could move into the southern Gulf by Wednesday.

The storm’s impacts could affect parts of the Gulf Coast later this week.

The weather service also sees indications that what is forming could be a large system, meaning more areas could be affected by wind, rain and flooding.

Weather observers have been circulating various model trains for days that show that a storm could make landfall in various areas along the U.S. Gulf Coast later this week.

But all these possible clues are mere speculation at this point.

“Although we are seeing early signs that a trackable phenomenon could soon form, the models are not yet sure what to base their predictions on at this point,” the weather service said.

“…when that lack of data feeds into the various models and then we look at the solutions 5-7 days later, it creates a wealth of inaccuracies within each model run that ultimately impact the overall output of the model run. This is why we continue to see such large variability from run to run and model to model in terms of the overall strength, trajectory and timing of this storm.”

Once the disturbance is established, a wealth of additional data will be made available that can be fed into computer forecast models to make predictions about its path and intensity.

Meteorologists will closely monitor the development of the disturbance, but will also keep an eye on weather systems in the United States, which could help determine the direction of the tropical system.

One of these is a high pressure system that is expected to be located over the southeastern United States. Meteorologists will also be watching a low pressure system that will move into the Midwest. Models had also predicted that a low pressure system would be cut off from this low pressure system, but on Sunday that seemed less likely.

According to the weather service, this cut-off low would have been important because it could have directed the tropical disturbance further to the west.

Instead, the models (at least at the moment) tend towards a stronger low pressure area, which could indicate a more easterly path of the still developing disturbance.

But don’t rely on it yet.

“Against this backdrop, these sudden changes in model guidance tell me that the upper-level factors at play here are extremely complex and volatile, and that no single model run should be taken at face value at this point, especially since we still do not have a trackable feature,” the weather service said on Sunday.

“Expect the model tracks to continue to fluctuate back and forth for a little while longer until the guidance systems have a better handle on the system and the upper influencing factors. Then we can start to focus on our local impacts.”