Monday, October 3, 2005

A storm to watch.

A couple of days ago Dr. Jeff Masters in his blog at Wunderground.com discussed the fact that some of the prediction models at the National Hurricane Center showed the unlikely possibility of a tropical system forming east of the Bahamas. He said, "Several of the global computer models continue to forecast that a tropical storm may form near the Bahama Islands on Monday or Tuesday." Well, this morning's Tropical Weather Outlook from the NHC states:

A LARGE BUT DISORGANIZED AREA OF SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS...
ASSOCIATED WITH A WESTWARD-MOVING TROPICAL WAVE AND AN UPPER-LEVEL
TROUGH...IS LOCATED A FEW HUNDRED MILES EAST OF THE CENTRAL BAHAMAS.
THUNDERSTORM ACTIVITY HAS BECOME A LITTLE MORE CONCENTRATED THIS
MORNING... AND UPPER-LEVEL WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO GRADUALLY BECOME
MORE CONDUCIVE FOR TROPICAL CYCLONE DEVELOPMENT DURING THE NEXT
COUPLE OF DAYS AS THIS SYSTEM MOVES WESTWARD.

After the pulse of activity that produced Katrina and Rita we relaxed a bit here in South Florida because the outlook for the next couple of weeks seemed to give us a break. Now it looks like things are heating up again. That disturbance east of the Bahamas has me worried as it does show some possibility of intensifying.