The National Hurricane Center began tracking a system in the Atlantic east of Florida with a small chance of forming into a tropical depression ahead of the official start of hurricane season.
In the NHC’s 8 a.m. Monday tropical update, forecasters said the showers and thunderstorms of a broad area of low pressure located a couple of hundred miles northeast of the central Bahamas was still poorly organized after initially eyeing the system on Sunday.
“Strong upper-level winds and dry air are expected to prevent development while the system moves generally north-northeastward at 5 to 10 mph over the southwestern Atlantic during the next day or so,” forecasters said.
They give the system a 10% chance of forming into a tropical depression or storm in the next two days.
The tracking forecasts that began last week offer up a longer look ahead for the 2023 hurricane season. The NHC will project chances for systems up to seven days before formation, an increase of two days over previous seasons.
Hurricane season officially runs from June 1-Nov. 30, although many recent years have seen storms form before that official start.
Technically, the NHC said 2023 has already seen its first tracked system, although it wasn’t named. In an update this month, the NHC stated an area of low pressure that formed off the northeastern coast of the U.S. in mid-January was in fact a subtropical storm.
Its retroactive designation means that the next tracked system could end up being named Tropical Depression Two by the NHC, although often storms churn up fast enough for them to skip right over the depression phase and go right into being named a tropical storm.
The first named system of the year would be Tropical Storm Arlene.
_____
