TWO AREAS TO WATCH BUT GENERALLY QUIET TROPICS FOR NOW

The National Hurricane Center is tracking Tropical Depression Five, which is just north of Bermuda and moving out to sea. It has a short window of time to organize a little more into Tropical Storm Emily. If that happens, it would be the earliest date that the “E” storm has been named in the record book.

If we get an Emily, it would be yet another named storm that started as a non-tropical disturbance though processes unrelated the “real” hurricane season still to come – which generally begins in August.

The broad low-pressure area over the Southeast that spawned the depression, may crank out another disturbance over the northern Gulf coast swinging toward the Atlantic coast in the vicinity of the Carolinas. This second daughter system is forecast to form so close to land that its chances are very low of developing until and if it moves into the Atlantic in a few days.

The main threat is heavy rain, which is mostly associated with the existing broad low-pressure area, and is already falling along and offshore of the Florida Panhandle and the northern Gulf coast.

Elsewhere in the tropics, Saharan Dust continues to dominate the atmosphere, which means tropical development is not expected this week across the tropical Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico.

In South Florida, the broad Southeast low-pressure system is drawing up tropical moisture from the south, and is priming the atmosphere for some extra-heavy thunderstorms. We’re also in a period of diminished ocean breeze, which heats up the near-shore waters and keeps the thunderstorms over or close the east-coast metro area.

Currently, the forecast shows a good chance of daily thunderstorms continuing at least until the middle of the week.