A 'disturbance' is moving toward Florida, and forecasters are watching it
UPDATE: The National Weather Service announced Friday that the disturbance has a near-zero chance of developing, but rain is still forecast for the weekend in South Florida.
Miami forecasters are monitoring a "disturbance" over the Caribbean and the Bahamas that is expected to reach the Florida Straits by Saturday.
Though not quite an invest, the meteorological term for a storm that threatens to become a tropical cyclone system, storm watchers are keeping a tab on the area of low pressure for signs of possible formation.
"We are looking at it," said National Weather Service Miami forecaster Maria Torres. "In this case, it's not showing any features of a tropical system."
Torres said the storm is expected to bring one to two inches of weekend rain to South Florida. In its Thursday briefing, the NWS said "the combination of an approaching front and the moisture associated with the disturbance will result in increasing showers and a slight chance of thunderstorms across South Florida starting Saturday."
Hurricane season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, when conditions are more favorable for cyclone formation, but storms can form at any time, Torres said.
Jeff Masters, the director of meteorology for The Weather Underground, estimated the storm had a 10 percent chance of developing, possibly into a tropical system, in the next few days.
Masters, a former flight meteorologist for NOAA's Aircraft Operations Center, wrote in a blog entry on Wednesday that the temperatures of the sea surface below the disturbance of about 80 degrees were "warm enough to support formation of a tropical depression," but that the variation in wind velocity, or the wind shear, in the area would delay any potential development.
If you're curious, the first name on the list of Atlantic storms for 2018 is Alberto.
This story was originally published May 3, 2018 at 11:40 AM with the headline "A 'disturbance' is moving toward Florida, and forecasters are watching it."