NANA TO HIT CENTRAL AMERICA AT NEAR HURRICANE STRENGTH TONIGHT

Tropical Storm Nana is speeding west in the Caribbean. It’s forecast to make landfall in Belize at or near hurricane strength tonight. Small-diameter storms like Nana can quickly change their intensity – up or down – so residents in the western Caribbean need to stay aware.

Some dry air has been working its way into the circulation, which seems to have been limiting Nana’s development, so no rapid intensification is forecast. But people there need to be ready for the possibility the Nana will further organize in the last few hours before landfall, just in case it pulls together at the last minute and comes ashore stronger than forecast.

Tropical Storm Omar is well off the East Coast and heading out to sea. It’s only really interesting because it added to our already record-setting list of named storms when it formed yesterday. We’re about a week ahead of the crazy 2005 hurricane season on the storm-name list.

In the far eastern Atlantic, Tropical Disturbance #1 is back on the board. It’s been lollygagging around between Africa and the Caribbean for a number of days, and it’s forecast to continue to drift nowhere special. Some of the computer forecast models show it organizing into at least a tropical depression over the next few days.

Behind it, a large disturbance has moved off of Africa. It’s catching up with another disturbance not far ahead of it. Together I’m calling them Combo Disturbance #2. Computer forecast models show them merging and heading in the general direction of the Caribbean islands.

In a few days, the Combo Disturbance may in some fashion interact with laggard Tropical Disturbance #1 in terms of each affecting the other’s track. In any case, nothing is going to happen quickly with any of these disturbances. And it’s not clear they will ever affect any land on our side of the ocean.

There's a lot of dry air just north of the tropical belt in the eastern Atlantic, which should make life a bit difficult for all of these disturbances, at least for now.

No tropical systems are expected to threaten the U.S. through Labor Day.