By Robin Webb | [email protected] | South Florida Sun Sentinel and Angie DiMichele | [email protected] | South Florida Sun Sentinel
A tropical wave, located just east of the southeastern Caribbean on Sunday, could develop by midweek -- potentially into a tropical storm, experts said.
The system "currently lacks a closed circulation," but is churning up a large area of showers and thunderstorms, which are expected to impact the Windward Islands in the southeastern Caribbean through Monday, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The system is predicted to start organizing midweek in the central or southern Caribbean, moving west at about 20 mph.
"As it reaches the warm waters of the Caribbean early this week, low wind shear may allow it to quickly become a tropical storm," said AccuWeather Lead Hurricane Expert Alex DaSilva.
The next named storm would be Melissa.
"Atmospheric conditions are primed for a storm to form in the Caribbean," DaSilva said. "The waters are exceptionally warm since the Caribbean has not been disturbed by a single tropical storm or hurricane so far this season."
As of 2 a.m. Sunday, the National Hurricane Center has given it a 10% chance of developing in the next 48 hours an a 50% chance of developing in the next seven days, a slight rise in odds since Saturday.
"The storm would have to get to Jamaica or Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula to be of concern to Florida as we see it now," DaSilva said.
"The track of the disturbance is unusually far south, especially for October," Fox Weather Hurricane Specialist Bryan Norcross wrote in his Hurricane Intel blog. "One of the open questions about the forecast is whether the system will track so close to the South American coast that it won't be able to organize and intensify."
"If the system remains weak and steers westward, it may continue on a path into Central America with no additional U.S. threat," DaSilva said.
Four hurricanes have formed so far in the Atlantic season, and none has hit the U.S. Of the 12 named Atlantic storms so far, only Tropical Storm Chantal has made a U.S. landfall.