A new tropical system may develop in the Caribbean this week
The Atlantic hurricane season isn’t over just yet.
Forecasters are watching yet another disturbance in the Caribbean Sea for potential tropical development later this week. The system has a medium (50 percent) chance of development, according to Monday afternoon’s tropical weather outlook from the National Hurricane Center.
The disturbance, which is currently south of Hispaniola, will gradually move into the western Caribbean over the next couple of days.
It’ll find an environment with relatively low wind shear, decent humidity, and plenty of warm waters to fuel ample thunderstorm development. We could have a tropical depression in the region by the end of the week.
If this system manages to become a tropical storm, it would earn the name Sara as the eighteenth storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season.
This is right where you would expect to see tropical development this late in the year.
High wind shear and puffs of cold, dry air blowing off North America make for an increasingly hostile environment across the Atlantic basin. The favorable conditions of the Caribbean remain one final refuge for late-season storms to try pulling their act together.
Make sure your hurricane preparedness kits and plans are still ready to go in case anything threatens land over the next few weeks. As we’ve seen several times this year, you don’t have to live near the coast for flooding, power outages, and tornadoes to affect communities hundreds of miles inland.
