Looking toward late this week for tropical development in the Caribbean

One of those broad areas of low pressure is likely to form over the southern Caribbean Sea this week. There is a significant agreement among the various computer forecasts that a gyre-type system will develop, but little consensus on what happen after that.

Recall the Central American Gyre (CAG) we have encountered several times this year. This is a version of the same type of large-diameter circulation, but centered over the water between Central America and Colombia. And like the CAG, it could eventually consolidate into an organized tropical depression or tropical storm.

For most of this week, hostile upper winds will blow across the Gulf of Mexico and the northern Caribbean, keeping the only possible development area far to the south. As the pattern evolves by next weekend, however, some long-range computer forecasts show a more conducive environment for an organized tropical system to develop.

The National Hurricane Center has the odds of at least a tropical depression forming over the next 7 days in the low range at this point. As always, there is high uncertainty when a system hasn’t even begun to form yet.

There is even higher uncertainty where an organized system might track, if it develops around next weekend. A track toward the north can’t be ruled out, although a weak system meandering in the Caribbean seems about as likely. In any case, we’ll be watching for developments all week.

If an organized tropical system develops and strengthens so it gets a name, it will become Tropical Storm Patty.