A Slight Chance a Disturbance Might Sneak Across the Atlantic This Week

The National Hurricane Center continues to show crickets across the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the Gulf into next weekend.

A giant Saharan dust cloud dominates the eastern tropical Atlantic, while hostile upper-level winds are eliminating the possibility of development in the Caribbean.

In the far eastern Atlantic, a large disturbance moved off Africa on Thursday. The Saharan dust is making it hard to see, but it's located just west of the Cabo Verde Islands. The bulk of the disturbance is likely to succumb to the hostile conditions, but some of the computer forecast models indicate that a northern piece of the system could eventually make it to our side of the ocean.

This is all low-probability business, but the idea is that a moisture surge would arrive in South Florida Thursday or Friday, with the disturbance moving into the Gulf over next weekend.

This is a little bit plausible, because in this scenario the disturbance would migrate west well to the north of the hostile winds across the Caribbean. It would still have to survive its encounter with the Saharan dust, however.

It's very common for tropical moisture surges to move across South Florida this time of year. Sometimes they become the seeds for some kind of development in the Gulf. So we'll keep that in mind as we look toward next weekend and early next week.

Otherwise, enjoy the crickets.