Will tropical wave that Florida is watching develop?

The Atlantic Basin remained crowded Thursday morning, with forecasters monitoring five systems:

A disturbance that Florida is closely watching in the Caribbean Sea has a high chance of turning into a tropical depression in the next couple of days.

Two systems are in the eastern Atlantic, one of which could be a tropical depression this weekend.

And there’s Hurricane Fiona and Tropical Storm Gaston, neither of which is a threat to Florida or the rest of the United States.

The tropical wave that was off the coast of Venezuela and that models suggest could blow up into a hurricane in the Caribbean this week was struggling to form a defined center on Thursday. Radar images showed the beginnings of a swirl, but mostly a disorganized system.

It was battling leftover wind shear from Category 4 Hurricane Fiona, which ripped through Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic this week, and was so close to Venezuela on Thursday afternoon that it was half on land — slowing down development.

The National Hurricane Center expected those impediments to fade away in the next few days, allowing the wave to develop into a tropical depression or storm in the western Caribbean.

“The upper-level wind environment over the low is expected to become more conducive for development, and a tropical depression is expected to form during the next day or two while moving westnorthwestward at 10 to 15 mph across the central Caribbean Sea,” the hurricane center said in its advisory at 8 p.m.

The hurricane center Thursday afternoon upped the system’s formation chances from 70% to 90% through the next 48 hours and a 90% chance within the week.

In its advisory, the hurricane center notes: “Locally heavy rainfall and gusty winds are likely to affect northwestern Venezuela, the ABC island chain, and northeastern Colombia through Friday. Interests in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands should closely monitor the progress of this system.”

“That’s as far as we go at this point,” acting director of the hurricane center, Jamie Rhome, said in a Thursday morning broadcast. “There’s been a lot of speculation about what this storm might do if it were to get into the Gulf of Mexico. It’s too soon to speculate out that far in time.”

The latest rounds of computer models continue to show possible paths that stretch from the Yucatan

Peninsula to Florida’s Panhandle, although they are far less confident than the predictions for what the potential storm could do in the short term.

The GFS American model, for example, takes the system into the west-central Gulf of Mexico next week, which would be good for South Florida, WTVJNBC 6 Meteorologist

Adam Berg said on Twitter. Berg said the European model, on the other hand, brings the system closer to Florida, which would bring more rain and breezes to the region.

“Until the models agree, our confidence is low when it comes to South Florida Impacts,” Berg tweeted.