Invest 97-L Located Over The South-Central Caribbean: An area of disturbed weather located to the south of Jamaica over the south-central Caribbean seems to be getting better organized today. The shower and thunderstorm activity associated with Invest 97-L seems to be beginning to wrap around the low pressure center.
Because of this increase in organization, it seems very likely that Invest 97-L will become a tropical depression as soon as sometime on Monday and probably a tropical storm shortly thereafter.
It is also expected that Invest 97-L will head north and then northwestward over the next couple of days bringing this system across Jamaica by Monday night as a tropical storm and then across the Cayman Islands during Tuesday as a tropical storm. Those of you with interests in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands should be ready for tropical storm conditions from Monday through Tuesday. This will include squalls of heavy rain, flooding and very gusty winds.
By late Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, it is looking likely that Invest 97-L will push northwestward across western Cuba and then reach the southeastern Gulf of Mexico late Wednesday as a tropical storm.
Once we get into the later parts of this coming week, there are a lot of different questions on where Invest 97-L will track and how strong it may get in the Gulf of Mexico.
One factor to the potential strength of Invest 97-L in the Gulf of Mexico is going to be the environmental conditions. It currently appears that the environmental conditions will be highly unfavorable for strengthening over the northern Gulf of Mexico while they look to be favorable for strengthening over the southern Gulf of Mexico.
Given this, there are at least a couple of possible scenarios at play:
The upper level weather pattern will cause Invest 97-L to be steered to the northwest by a strong high pressure ridge over Florida. An upper level trough of low pressure over the southwestern United States will cause that high pressure ridge to actually strengthen by late this week.
On one hand, if Invest 97-L tracks quickly in forward speed leading to the storm outrunning the strengthening high pressure system. In this scenario, Invest 97-L could approach the Florida Panhandle and Big Bend area of Florida late this week. That said, the strong wind shear values over the northern Gulf of Mexico would cause significant weakening of any system approaching the Panhandle and Big Bend areas of Florida.
The second scenario is for a slowly moving system to track northwestward into the central Gulf of Mexico by late this coming week where it would run headlong into strong wind shear and likely weaken and dissipate before reaching the northern Gulf Coast.
The main takeaway from all of this is that the uncertainty with where Invest 97-L might go in the Gulf of Mexico and because of this, all interests in the Gulf of Mexico and in particular along the northern and eastern Gulf Coast should closely monitor the latest with Invest 97-L.
Model Track Forecast:
Area Of Disturbed Weather Expected To Form Near The Northern Leeward Islands By The Middle Part Of This Week: If Invest 97-L isn’t going to be a problem enough, it does look like there is the likelihood that we’ll see a separate area of disturbed weather form near the northern Leeward Islands around the middle part of this week.
This is going to be an area of disturbed weather that’ll need to be watched closely as it’ll probably head westward and be caught underneath that high pressure ridge. Because of this, it seems plausible it’ll be steered into the southern Bahamas by about Friday or Saturday and then potentially head for the area of the northwestern Caribbean near western Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula around next Sunday and next Monday.
For now, this is a possible system that might need to be watched late this coming week and next weekend, especially for those of you over the northern Caribbean Islands and the Bahamas.
The next tropical weather discussion will be issued on Monday Afternoon.