South Florida in for a rainy, maybe floody weekend as new Atlantic system brews
.png "The NHC is watching two disturbances in the Atlantic that could develop into tropical storms or depressions.")
South Florida is in for a good bit of rain this weekend as a tropical system drifts over the state. And there’s another one in the eastern Atlantic that’s worth watching for next week.
Although the National Hurricane Center has marked the closer system as a disturbance worth watching, its chances of developing into a formal tropical depression or storm remain quite low. As of Friday at 8 p.m., the hurricane center gave it just a 10% chance of strengthening in the next two to seven days — a figure that hasn’t budged since Thursday morning.
Either way, the disturbance is expected to dump rain across the peninsula as it slowly moves across Florida over the next few days.
The Miami office of the National Weather Service said the region could see 1 to 2 inches of rain over the weekend, with some spots seeing up to 3 inches under particularly heavy rainstorms. In some cases, 3 to 5 inches of rain might be possible, forecasters said, which could lead to flash flooding.
“Rounds of heavy rainfall this afternoon and evening could lead to isolated flooding concerns along the East Coast metro area,” NWS said Friday morning.
And that’s on top of the already dangerous seas. Hurricanes Imelda and Humberto left a rip current and high surf in their wake that is still making the waters off Florida’s east coast more dangerous for swimmers and boaters, a threat that is expected to continue for a few more days.
One more factor to add to the flood equation: king tides. One of the highest annual tides of the year is on Wednesday, and the offshore winds blown in from this disturbance, plus all of the rain, likely spells out more flooding for South Floridians.
“The combination of higher tides (”King Tides”) and breezy onshore winds will set the stage for saltwater flooding over the next several days along the east coast of our area,” NWS said Friday afternoon.
Chances rise for Atlantic storm
The hurricane center is also watching another disturbance in the far eastern Atlantic, a tropical wave that rolled off the coast of Africa Friday afternoon and could combine with another disturbance in a day or so.
As of Friday’s 8 p.m. update, its chances of developing into a tropical depression or storm had remained at 50% in the next seven days, after rising earlier in the day, and no chance in the next two. Forecasters said a tropical depression is likely to form by the end of next week near the far eastern Caribbean islands, also known as the Antilles.
Long-range storm models all support some form of storm forming within a week or so, including the European model. But they differ in that some models see a weaker system headed straight into the Caribbean and others predict a stronger storm with a northern curve that’s gotten pretty familiar this season — think Hurricane Erin or Humberto.
“The Atlantic system will take the better part of next week to move across the [main development region] basin, but it looks like some model consolidation on moving it north around the subtropical high as we have seen with systems all season,” the Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore wrote on X Friday morning. “By this time next week we could have one or two named systems.”
The next name on the storm list is Jerry.
Miami Herald staff writer Devoun Cetoute contributed to this report.
This story was originally published October 3, 2025 at 8:25 AM.
