NHC observes three areas for potential development
The National Hurricane Center is closely monitoring three tropical systems, including a low pressure system that could form in the Gulf of Mexico.
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The National Hurricane Center is closely monitoring a brewing system over the southeastern Gulf of Mexico that has the potential to develop into a tropical storm by the end of next week.
Two other tropical disturbances in the Atlantic are also on the organization’s radar, both of which have only a small chance of strengthening into tropical depressions or storms by next week.
The first disturbance, associated with the remnants of Tropical Storm Gordon, is “producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms” more than a thousand miles southwest of the Azores in the North Atlantic, the hurricane center said. Strong upper-level winds should slow the system within a few days “as it meanders across the central subtropical Atlantic,” the organization said.
Farther west, a second disturbance is also producing “shower activity” about 650 miles northeast of the Leeward Islands, where the northeastern Caribbean Sea meets the western Atlantic Ocean, according to the hurricane center.
“Environmental conditions appear to be only moderately conducive to some development of this system over the next few days as it drifts northwestward across the central or western subtropical Atlantic at about five miles per hour,” the organization said.
The Hurricane Center estimated the probability that one of the two disturbances would develop into a tropical depression at 20%.
The center is also monitoring “an extensive low pressure system” that could form over the northwestern Caribbean sometime next week. It’s possible that a tropical depression could form as the system slowly moves north into the southern Gulf of Mexico through the end of next week.
If the system, which has a 40 percent chance of forming, becomes a named storm, Tropical Storm Helene would be the eighth named storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, according to the Florida Times-Union, a USA TODAY Network publication.
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Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]
