The disturbance in the western Caribbean that we’ve been watching for the last few days continues to battle moderate to high wind shear. For the time being, this is keeping any convection well to the east of the broad area of low pressure. As this area drifts slowly north through the weekend into early next week shear will begin to lessen, and it’s possible a tropical depression or weak tropical storm will form.

Up until now there, there hasn’t been a lot of model agreement. However, the latest (12z) run of the GFS has jumped on board with the Euro in a big way, showing Tropical Storm Michael or even Hurricane Michael heading toward the central Gulf Coast next week. It’s just one run of one model, but we’ll have to see if the trend continues. It’s something that we’ll be watching closely through the weekend, but at the very least, expect a slug of moisture heading into parts of the Southeast next week – leading to increased rain chances and the potential for localized flooding. Stay tuned.

Even though we’re on the downswing, October can still be a very active month in the tropics. Typically we start to see less in the way of tropical waves rolling off the coast of Africa, and more in the way of ‘home grown’ development coming out of the Caribbean. Along those lines, we are going to be watching an area of disturbed weather across the western Caribbean over the next several days.

It’s a messy setup for now, but there should be a broad area of low pressure that drifts north toward the Yucatan Peninsula through this weekend, and potentially helps set up a plume of moisture and heavy rain up through the western Gulf Coast and central U.S. next week. At some point next week, it’s a possible that a secondary area of low pressure may form further east near Cuba and head north either into the eastern Gulf or far west Atlantic. This is many days away, and at this point is just one of those setups where we watch and see how things evolve.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Leslie continues to churn and slowly strengthen in the middle of the Atlantic about 500 miles east of Bermuda. It will slowly head north over the next few days and eventually make a turn to the east this weekend. As it moves over cooler waters the next couple of days, it will slowly start to weaken and lose tropical characteristics.