According to Rob Lightbrown from the Crown Weather Service, there will be a hint for some sort of tropical or even sub-tropical development either in the western Caribbean, the eastern Gulf of Mexico or the Florida Straits & the Bahamas starting this upcoming weekend.

The latest GFS model forecasts that a storm system will form in the central and northwestern Bahamas on Sunday and Monday and forecasts this system to track north-northwestward along the east coast of Florida around the middle part of next week and eventually into South and North Carolina next Thursday or Friday.

The NOGAPS model forecasts the development of a tropical system in the southwestern Caribbean by about Saturday and forecasts this system to track right over Jamaica as a tropical storm on Sunday night or Monday morning. From there, the NOGAPS model forecasts this tropical system to eventually track into the Bahamas by next Tuesday as a tropical storm.

The Canadian model forecasts that this system will start out as a broad low pressure system just southwest of Jamaica on Friday. The Canadian model forecasts that this system will strengthen into a tropical storm along the south coast of Cuba on Saturday night and shows it tracking into the Florida Keys as a tropical storm on Sunday. The longer range Canadian model guidance forecasts that this system will track into the eastern and central Gulf of Mexico once we head into Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. The Canadian model then forecasts this tropical storm to loop around the Gulf of Mexico and pulls it through the Florida Keys for a second time next Thursday before tracking east-northeast into the northwestern Bahamas next Friday.

The European model forecasts the development of what looks like a sub-tropical storm in the Yucatan Channel on Sunday and forecasts it to track northward into the Florida Big Bend area next Tuesday with tropical storm force winds.

Rob also pointed out that the upward motion values of the Madden Julian Oscillation are quite high from 12 October to 18 October and he believes that with the overall pattern of a strong high pressure system over the mid-Atlantic and northeastern United States, that we will see tropical development starting this weekend somewhere between the Bahamas and the western Caribbean.

Rob suspects that we will see an initially broad area of low pressure form in the western Caribbean on Friday and Saturday that winds up into a tropical storm in either the southeastern Gulf of Mexico or in the Florida Straits by Monday. From there, he thinks we will see a slow northward moving tropical storm that tracks across the eastern Gulf of Mexico just off of Florida’s west coast on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.

Go to Crown Weather Services at www.crownweather.com or to the National Hurricane Centre at www.nhc.noaa.gov for more information. iNews wishes to thank Crown Weather for their permission to use their information and graphics. Please support them.