Hurricane center gives high odds Atlantic system will become tropical depression

ORLANDO, Fla. — The National Hurricane Center raised its forecast chances a tropical wave in the Atlantic will develop into the season’s next tropical depression or storm.

In its 2 p.m. tropical forecast Saturday, the system with a wide stretch of showers and thunderstorms has become more active since Thursday and is now located in the central tropical Atlantic about halfway between Cape Verde Islands and the Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean.

Environmental conditions appear conducive for gradual development of this system during the next several days while it moves westward to west-northwestward at 15 to 20 mph across the central tropical Atlantic,” forecasters said. “A tropical depression is likely to form by the early to middle part of next week while the system approaches and then moves near or over the Lesser Antilles, and interests there should monitor the progress of this system.”

The storm’s next move would be a general west-northwest move over portions of the Greater Antilles that could include Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The NHC gives the system a 40% chance of development in the next two days and 80% in the next seven.

If it were to strengthen into a named system it could become Tropical Storm Ernesto.

Long-range forecast models show the system then veering north into the Atlantic before approaching Florida — but all of that would be more than a week away.

“It is too early to determine impacts, if any,” the National Weather Service in Melbourne posted in its long-term forecast. “Stay tuned for updates and continue to monitor reliable weather information.”

The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season has seen four named storms so far including two hurricanes. The most recent, Hurricane Debby, made landfall on Monday in Florida’s Big Bend as a Category 1 hurricane. It then diminished into a tropical storm while dropping torrents of rain as it made its way east into the Atlantic, turned north and made a second landfall in South Carolina on Thursday.

Storm production is likely to pick up with the height of hurricane season running from mid-August into October.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration updated its forecast this week for the season now calling for an extremely active one with 17 to 24 named storms, of which eight to 13 will be hurricanes. Of those, four to seven would become major hurricanes.

The official hurricane season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.