NHC is monitoring 3 disturbances in the Atlantic Ocean

The National Hurricane Center said Friday it is monitoring three systems in the Atlantic Ocean, including one that is likely to become a tropical depression in the coming days.

The NHC said a “broad area of low pressure” is likely to develop over the southwestern Caribbean Sea in the coming days, with “gradual development” possible thereafter.

But for those watching in the US, forecasters have good news: the storm is unlikely to move that far north, thanks to “hostile” winds.

The hurricane center gives the system a 70 percent chance of forming over the next seven days. The next named storms of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season are Patty and Rafael.

“A tropical depression is likely to form late this weekend or early next week as the system drifts” into the Caribbean Sea, hurricane center forecasters said Friday morning.

“Regardless of development, locally heavy rainfall is possible over parts of the adjacent land areas of the western Caribbean,” the NHC said.

Could the approaching storm hit the US?

Forecasters say most long-range models keep the system away from the U.S. due to strong winds over the Gulf of Mexico. “Hostile wind shear consistent with what we would expect in the Gulf in early November says this doesn’t go far,” WPLG-TV meteorologist Michael Lowry noted in his blog on Friday.

According to AccuWeather, an area of high pressure expected to develop over the U.S. East Coast next week could be strong enough to push it into Central America or Mexico.

“So while whatever comes from the system could impact parts of Mexico and Central America next week, the US is unlikely to see any significant impacts given the hostile upwind configuration of early November,” Lowry said.

He added that even if the system turns northward into the central or northern Gulf next week, it will be “quickly dismantled by a blistering wall of wind shear tearing across the entire northern and central Gulf of Mexico.”

NHC is monitoring two other systems in Atlantic

The hurricane center also said it is monitoring two other systems in the Atlantic Ocean, although both have a low chance of formation.

The first is described by the NHC as a “trough of low pressure” located near Puerto Rico, causing a “large area of showers and thunderstorms” over parts of the Greater Antilles and adjacent waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the Northeast of the Caribbean.

“Slow development of this system is possible over the next several days as it moves west-northwestward near the Greater Antilles,” NHC forecasters said Friday morning, although the system is expected to become incorporated into the low-pressure area over the Greater Antilles after that time Antilles. Caribbean.

“Regardless of development, locally heavy rain showers are possible in the coming days from the northern Leeward Islands westward across Puerto Rico and Hispaniola to eastern Cuba and the southeastern Bahamas,” the NHC said Friday.

The second system is described by the hurricane center as a “non-tropical storm-force low-pressure area” about 400 miles west of the western Azores. According to the NHC, the system will produce limited shower activity and some subtropical development is possible as the system moves eastward over the next few days.

Atlantic storm tracker

Gabe Hauari is a national trending news reporter at USA TODAY. You can follow him on X @GabeHauari or email him at [email protected].