Forecasters with the National Hurricane Center are monitoring an area of disturbed weather in the Caribbean Sea for potential tropical development this week. The 2022 Atlantic Hurricane Season isn’t even two weeks old and already it’s been pretty active.
You might recall Tropical Storm Alex developed from the remnants of Pacific Hurricane Agatha just a few days ago. Fortunately, that system did not develop into a named storm until it had moved out of the Gulf of Mexico and into the open waters of the Atlantic.
Forecasters are watching a similar area of the ocean that spawned the storm that became Alex this morning. The broad area of low pressure was located just off the eastern coast of Nicaragua and Honduras this morning. As of now, the system is just kicking off widely scattered showers and thunderstorms in that part of the country but further development is possible.
The National Hurricane Center has given this area of disturbed weather a 20% probability of becoming a tropical cyclone over the next five days. If there is development it will be slow. Some of the deterrents to the system growing stronger could be Saharan Dust which has caused Air Quality Alerts to be issued for parts of Louisiana this week.
There have been long-range forecast models that do pick up significant moisture coming from that part of the Caribbean over the next seven to ten days but as of now most of the models are not capturing a tropical system with any confidence. So, like most tropical outlooks, this will be a wait-and-see situation.
By the way, the next name up on the list of Tropical Cyclone names is Bonnie. Forecasters with NOAA are predicting anywhere from 14 to 21 named storms for the 2022 Hurricane Season. If that prognostication is correct we could be reporting on Nicole through Walter, as far as named storms are concerned this year. Of course, we’d have to get through Colin, Danielle, Earl, Fiona, Gaston, Hermine, Ian, Julia, Karl, Lisa, and Marti