Hurricane Center posts advisories for possible tropical storm

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The tropical Atlantic is starting to get busy.

The cluster of clouds and storms in the eastern Atlantic that forecasters were calling Potential Tropical Cyclone Six hadn’t become a cyclone as of Thursday evening.

If that low-pressure system ultimately strengthens to at least a tropical storm, it would be named Florence.

Forecasters say the system has an 80 percent chance of development over the next two days.

Meanwhile, a swath of clouds and storms that was covering much of the northeastern Caribbean and extending into the Atlantic Ocean was given a low chance of development — 10 percent over the next five days.

But even if the disturbance doesn’t become a tropical system, it could bring heavy rain to parts of Florida early next week, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Forecasts were anticipating the disturbance would move toward the eastern Gulf of Mexico, where conditions could prove to be more hospitable to storm formation.

Winds of 30 mph

The Miami-based National Hurricane Center began issuing advisories for the potential cyclone — a cyclone refers to tropical depressions, tropical storms, and hurricanes — at 11 a.m. Thursday.

By 5 p.m. there had been no significant changes to the weather system, which was about 260 miles southeast of the Cape Verde Islands on Thursday afternoon.

The maximum wind speeds were about 30 mph.

Forecasters were expecting tropical storm conditions in the southern Cape Verde Islands on Friday.

The Cape Verde Islands are several hundred miles off the coast of Africa, which means the potential Florence was a long distance, about 4,000 miles, from South Florida on Thursday.

The forecast track has the future storm traveling west before turning toward the west-northwest over the next few days.

Beyond that, it was too early to say with any certainty if the storm would threaten the U.S., although some long-range outlooks were throwing doubt on that possibility. Forecasts produced by the long-range, computer-powered forecast models used by weather agencies around the world suggest the likely tropical cyclone could head west into the Atlantic before turning north into the open ocean before reaching the Caribbean early next week, reducing the likelihood of landfall in the Caribbean islands or the United States.

Next two weeks active

But forecasters warn that any long-range forecast should be viewed with skepticism because conditions could change.

John Morales, chief meteorologist at South Florida’s WTVJ NBC-6, tweeted Thursday afternoon that the storm will not threaten the Caribbean or the United States

Other weather watchers are pointing out that conditions in the Atlantic hurricane zone, which includes the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, are becoming more hospitable to cyclone formation.

As such, there could be four disturbances to watch over the next two weeks, the popular Hurricane Tracker app posted in a tweet.

So far in 2018 the Atlantic tropics have been relatively quiet. At the start of August, hurricane experts at Colorado State University said that conditions in the Atlantic — cooler than average ocean surface temperatures and varying wind speeds in the atmosphere — have diminished the chances of a hurricane striking the U.S. during the remainder of the hurricane season, which goes until Nov. 30.