Stormtracker: National Hurricane Center tracks system with tropical storm potential
The National Hurricane Center is keeping close tabs on a brewing system that has a decent potential of developing into a tropical storm by the end of next week over the Southeastern Gulf of Mexico.
Two other tropical disturbances in the Atlantic that both have only a small chance of strengthening into tropical depressions or storms by next week are also on the organization's radar.
The first disturbance, associated with the remnants of Tropical Storm Gordon, is "producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms" more than a thousand miles southwest of the Azores islands in the North Atlantic Ocean, the hurricane center said. Strong upper-level winds should cause the system to slow within a few days "while it meanders over the central subtropical Atlantic," the organization said.
To the west, a second disturbance is also producing "shower activity" about 650 miles northeast of Leeward Islands, located where the northeastern Caribbean Sea meets the western Atlantic Ocean, according to the hurricane center.
"Environmental conditions appear only marginally conducive for some development of this system during the next couple of days while it drifts northwestward" at about five miles-per-hour over the central or western subtropical Atlantic, the organization said.
The hurricane center put the chance of a tropical depression developing from either disturbance at 20%.
The center is also monitoring "a broad area of low pressure" that could form sometime next week over the northwestern Caribbean Sea. It's possible a tropical depression could form as the system moves slowly to the north into the southern Gulf of Mexico through the end of next week.
If the system, which has a 40% chance to develop, becomes a named storm, it would be Tropical Storm Helene, the eighth named storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, according to the Florida Times-Union, a USA TODAY Network publication.
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Atlantic storm tracker
Contributing: Florida Times-Union
Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Stormtracker: NHC eyes system with tropical storm potential
