ZOMG have you seen the NHC Outlook Page? time to panic?

Ok, now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s add the caveats, disclaimers, and assorted actual data because there are systems to watch and monitor. First, the NHC Outlook, which looks pretty scary at first:

But of course long-time readers know to read the actual text message and look for the Magic Words(tm) before getting too excited about things. Only one system (AL90) has the “Interests <somewhere> should <do something>” phrase, in this case, “Interests in the eastern and central Caribbean should monitor the progress of this system.” And the main risk, as noted, is rain – development is not expected until it is past the windward islands. After than, it might be an issue for the central Caribbean, but too early to tell – see below when we try to cook the spaghetti.

The second system to watch doesn’t even have an invest area number assigned yet (although I expect that to happen in the next modeling cycle). It’s the thing approaching Florida, and it is increasingly likely to spin up once it enters the Gulf. As noted in a post yesterday (link), the Gulf of Mexico is above normal at the moment, which means it has a lot of energy. Here is this morning’s satellite image just because it’s pretty, and to show you what this and the others look like today:

The bright red blob on the NHC map, Invest AL98, may well become a tropical depression by Monday. However, in looking at the tracking models, both AL99 and AL98 (as well as the other system just coming off of Africa) are most only going to be of interest to fish and fish related interests:

That said, AL99, while the conditions are only marginal, might threaten the northern Caribbean before turning. And as noted above, AL90 could spin up in a couple of days and threaten some place in the Caribbean. The current tracking (both the US GFS and the European models) show it doing a sharp northward turn – here is the GFS version, showing a tropical storm traversing Hispaniola:

So the TLDR is Hilary (described this morning) is going to be a real problem for the southwest. AL90 (just southeast of Barbados) will rain on the windward islands, but needs to be watched as it enters the central Caribbean to see if it becomes a problem. The disturbance approaching Florida may well be a problem next week once it enters the fetid realms south of New Orleans.