Tropical disturbance over Atlantic worries hurricane experts

After weeks of quiet, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) is watching a tropical disturbance in the Atlantic Ocean.

Located east of the Lesser Antilles, this disturbance is expected to interact with an approaching tropical wave during the next several days, according to the NHC.

There is a medium chance that the disturbance will develop, but the odds have been increasing over the weekend.

“Environmental conditions are forecast to become conducive for some development in a day or two, and a tropical depression could form around midweek while the system is near or over the northern Leeward Islands, Greater Antilles or southwestern Atlantic Ocean,” the NHC said in its latest outlook.

From there, the latest NHC outlook projects the system will head in the general direction of Florida or the Southeast coast.

If the system were to strengthen into a tropical storm, it would be named Debby – the fourth named storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season.

“Now that things are beginning to simmer back down in terms of the Saharan dust, that’s going to ante up (the season),” FOX Weather Meteorologist Michael Estime said. “So we’re not going to have all that dust in the atmosphere to kind of block and shelter some of the sun.”

In addition, water temperatures continue to warm in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, with the latest readings generally in the mid- to upper 80s.

It remains a bit uncertain where the disturbance goes after reaching the Lesser Antilles.

Any interaction with the mountains on larger Caribbean islands will play a key role in the system’s organization, the FOX Forecast Center said.

Meanwhile, two large areas of high pressure – one over the southern Plains and the other anchored in the Atlantic near Bermuda – could decide the storm’s ultimate track whether it curls up the Eastern Seaboard, heads for Florida or stays south and tracks into the Gulf of Mexico.

This disturbance comes as hurricane season has been relatively quiet since Hurricane Beryl made landfall in Texas earlier this month.