HOUSTON – I'm following a rather disorganized area of showers and thunderstorms over the eastern and central Caribbean Sea Monday morning for possible development later this week.
A tropical wave in the eastern Caribbean is moving west at about 15 mph. There is currently no low pressure center associated with this disturbance and wind shear Monday, and likely Tuesday, should keep the system disorganized.
However, by Wednesday, the wave will have reached the very warm waters of northwest Caribbean east of the Yucatan Peninsula and north of Honduras while models forecast the wind shear to lessen.
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The National Hurricane Center gives this disturbance a 20 percent chance of developing into a depression or tropical storm over the next five days. We'll be watching for possible storm development in that area by Thursday.
Forecasting where a storm will track before it has even formed is fraught with error. However, all the models are forecasting a high pressure ridge building aloft over Texas and northern Mexico Monday then moving west toward the end of the week while a strong trough of low pressure extends southward through the Mississippi Valley to the northern Gulf.
This pattern would suggest that whatever moves out of the northwest Caribbean Thursday or Friday will either be steered north through the eastern Gulf by the trough or due west across the Yucatan and Bay of Campeche into Mexico by the ridge. Both cases are away from southeast Texas.
Stay tuned!