97-l moved into the Eastern Caribbean Sea this afternoon and is now located at 14.8 degrees north and 64.8 degrees west. The pressure remains at 1010 millibars, maximum sustained winds are 30mph, and movement is west.
The National Hurricane Center has increased the odds of 97-l developing to 40% within the next 48 hours and 70% within the next five days as of their 2:00pm EDT tropical weather outlook.
Forecast for 97-l
97-l is still moving fairly fast at the moment; but it is still maintaining a decent amount of thunderstorm activity – although this activity is disorganized. Until 97-l slows down it won’t really be able to develop all that much.
In addition, there is also an area of higher wind shear just ahead of 97-l that could hinder development over the next day or two. So in the short term only gradual development is expected.
However, the latest model guidance is forecasting 97-l to begin to slow down and arrive in the Central or Western Caribbean by Tuesday.
When 97-l arrives in the Central and Western Caribbean it will be in a conductive environment for development. Sea surface temperatures are very high; wind shear is expected to be on the low side; and the environment will be rather unstable.
All of the aforementioned factors combined will likely allow for the development of 97-l into a tropical depression or storm.
In fact, the latest runs of the GFS, ECMWF, CMC, UKMET, and the GFS and ECMWF ensembles all forecast development of 97-l before or by the time it gets to the Western Caribbean.
If 97-l develops it is still too early to know how strong it would get and where it would go. However, at this time there are two possible scenarios. The first is that 97-l could develop and remain weak causing it to get shunted into Central America by a ridge of high pressure. The second is that 97-l could develop and strengthen some allowing it to move northwest across the Yucatan Peninsula and into the Western Gulf.
We won’t really have an idea of what will happen with 97-l until tomorrow or Tuesday. At the moment it is nothing do be overly concerned about.
We will have another update out on invest 97-l tomorrow.
