NO SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENT IS EXPECTED THROUGH THE WEEKEND BUT WE’LL WATCH THE TROPICS NEXT WEEK

There are various areas of disturbed weather over and around South Florida, but it’s one that doesn’t exist yet that’s of special interest. That’s the Potential Tropical Disturbance that appears increasingly likely to form next week in the southern Caribbean.

For today, the rainy weather in South Florida is related an upper-level disturbance moving over us from southwest to northeast ahead of a cold front that is going to push down the state. Besides some heavy thunderstorms, the tides are running about a foot above normal, so local flooding is a possibility. High-tide times are around 9:00 AM and 9:00 PM.

In the Atlantic east of Bermuda, there is a non-tropical low-pressure system, which is very common. They normally move from west to east across the ocean. But it appears this one is going to get abandoned by the jet stream flow, and meander around toward the south and southwest of where it currently is.

As it drifts over the still-warm Atlantic waters farther south, it could become tropical enough to be classified a depression or a storm. It doesn’t look like it would be a threat to land at this point, though we’ll see what happens in a week. The next name on the Greek-alphabet list is Epsilon.

The Tropical Disturbance over the northeastern Caribbean islands has been torn apart by strong upper winds. It will move through the islands over the next couple of days as a gusty moisture surge.

Farther to the south is our area of interest. The long-range computer forecast models continue to insist that an atmospheric pattern conducive for tropical development will expand over the southern Caribbean Sea with an organized circulation developing about the middle of next week. This raises our interest because a number of significant storms have come out of the Caribbean in October in the past.

The computer forecasts are unhelpful in pinning down what’s going to happen after the system starts to develop. As we always say, poorly organized or developing systems are normally poorly forecast. Well, this one hasn’t even developed yet, so that goes double.

For now, we’ll keep an eye on the forecasts and watch for developments next week.