Tropical system could form in Gulf and hit Florida’s west coast next week, forecasters say
After a quiet season on the Gulf Coast so far, the forecast models and National Hurricane Center now show a tropical system could form and hit the west coast of Florida next week.
“Florida. Buy gas, water, and beer this morning before the word gets out,” Mike’s Weather Page posted on Facebook Thursday morning. Mike Boylan of Tampa is a popular online tropical forecaster.
As of 2 p.m. Thursday, the Hurricane Center had the chance of development over seven days as 60%.
Right now, it is a large area of low pressure near the Pacific coast of Central America, and it is forecast to move into the Caribbean Sea this weekend and continue northeast toward Florida next week.
While many storms form off the coast of Africa and cross the Atlantic, it is also typical this time of year for storms to form in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean and head north.
The good news is those have less time to strengthen before making landfall and often reach the U.S. as a tropical depression or tropical storm. However the Gulf waters are hotter than they’ve ever been, and warm water is fuel for tropical systems.
As always, these are very early forecasts and the storm could dissipate, or its projected path could change several times before landfall. The two major hurricane models to watch are the GFS and ECMWF.
“Global models do not yet have good agreement on this system, with the GFS showing a much weaker surface feature than the ECMWF,” the National Weather Service office in Tampa Bay said in its forecast discussion.
“Either way, rain chances are expected to increase Tuesday and Wednesday and temperatures should moderate as cloud cover increases.”
Heavy rains would be welcome in Manatee County, where there is extreme drought along the coast and severe to moderate drought conditions inland. 2023 has been the driest year on record, and the past 12 months have seen about half of the average rainfall.
The story will update with more information and forecasts as they are available.
