Hope you’re having a safe and happy 4th of July weekend! Activity has picked up a little in the tropics over the last 24 hours. Tropical Depression Five formed a couple hundred miles west of Bermuda on Saturday morning. It’ll be passing just north of the island late Saturday night. This system will be held in check by dry air and wind shear as it races northeast, but it may strengthen just enough to become our fifth named storm of the season – Edouard.

There’s also an area in the northern Gulf that we’ll be keeping an eye on the rest of the weekend. Nothing significant is expected here, but any time you have a stalled front in the vicinity of warm Gulf waters this time of year it has to be watched. More than likely this will simply end up being a weak area of low pressure moving east across north Florida/south Georgia and into the Atlantic in the next day or two – doing nothing more than helping to spark additional scattered downpours.

Still pretty quiet in the tropics as we get ready to head into the second month of the hurricane season. That being said, the season is running well above normal with four named storms already in the books.

A big reason why things have been so quiet recently is the tremendous amount of Saharan dust blanketing the Atlantic basin – to an extent that hasn’t been seen in a few decades. Plus, this usually isn’t a very active time of the hurricane season anyway.

As of Monday evening, there’s only one area on the map that we’re watching, and that really isn’t anything to be worried about. An area of low pressure along the coast of North Carolina will be headed out to sea over the next couple days before getting absorbed into a frontal boundary. There may be a flare up of convection as this area moves over the Gulf Stream, but development odds are slim.