An area of concern is with the broad area of low pressure over Central America. We expect this area of low pressure to move northeast and slowly become better organized over the western Caribbean north of Honduras during early next week.

This system could become a tropical storm before a cold front reaches the area on Wednesday. If the upper-level trough supporting next week front extends far enough to the south, this could help eject the developing system to the northeast ahead of the front Tuesday night and Wednesday of next week.

This system could not only impact Belize and the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico it could also affect Cuba and perhaps even Florida. But this is highly uncertain at this point.

Some global computer models are showing some sign that this feature will organize and get ejected northeast Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.

However, other computer information suggests the low pressure area will get stuck over the Yucatan all next week and never become an organized tropical system. Anyone living in this area or having interests in this area of the Atlantic Basin should keep up with the latest updates on this system.

Accuweather

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I am closely watching an area of disturbed weather in the western and northwestern Caribbean. There is an area of low pressure associated with this disturbed weather and satellite imagery this morning showed some deeper areas of convection about halfway between the Yucatan Peninsula and the Cayman Islands.

The NAM model continues to significantly develop this system into a tropical storm over this weekend and forecasts it to be in the extreme northwestern Caribbean by Monday morning as a 45 mph tropical storm. Models like the European model hints at the possibility of this system becoming more of a sub-tropical system over the weekend. The European model then forecasts this system to shear apart and be entrained into a strong trough of low pressure over the eastern United States around the middle part of next week. It seems that the European and most of the other global model guidance forecasts that this system is not able to focus the energy to spin up a tropical storm, while the NAM model does forecast this scenario.

Environmental conditions are somewhat favorable for development with an area of 10 to 15 knots of wind shear found over the extreme western Caribbean near Belize. The Madden Julian Oscillation is currently in a favorable phase right now and the ocean waters are more than warm enough to support tropical development. Since, environmental conditions are forecast to remain somewhat favorable for development, I think there is a fairly good chance that we will see tropical development in the western and northwestern Caribbean this weekend into early next week. It likely will not be as strong as the NAM model forecasts, however, I think a solution that is a little stronger than the European model seems more likely.

This system, even if it does not develop, will bring very heavy rainfall to Central America, central and western Cuba, Belize, the Yucatan Peninsula and the Cayman Islands from today through this weekend. This heavy rainfall will bring the likelihood of flash floods and mudslides to all of these areas.


Crown Weather