An area of low pressure off the Louisiana coast is unlikely to spin up into a tropical storm or hurricane, and most of the heavy rain associated with this weather system should go well to the north of the Rio Grande Valley, meteorologists say.
The low-pressure system has been an area of concern for several days but it appears at this point there is less than a 10% chance of it intensifying over the next two or three days.
“We do expect a surface low is going to develop at some point, but we don’t think it’s going to become a named tropical system or anything like that,” Dave Houk, senior meteorologist at AccuWeather, said Monday.
“We just don’t see it spinning up enough near the coast. Can we rule it out? No. And that’s why the National Hurricane Center has their low risk, as we do, about something spinning up, but it’s not the ideal situation for that,” he added.
Houk said the primary threat from the disturbance in the northern gulf is heavy rain as it tracks to the southwest toward the Texas coast.
But even here, he added, computer models show most of the heaviest rainfall will occur near Corpus Christi and points north.
“How far southwest that feature goes is going to determine exactly how much rain we get in the Valley, and right now we don’t see any guidance that is bringing it to the south and west of the Valley, which would be the more optimum position to get into the moisture and the heavier rainfall,” Houk said.
Houk said if the system does back far enough south and west, some heavier thunderstorms could impact the Valley but would probably be limited to coastal areas like South Padre Island and Port Isabel, along with Willacy County.
“But that’s not the most likely solution at this point,” he said.
A pair of tropical waves are spinning from east to west off the coast of South America but those don’t pose any immediate threat to the U.S. mainland.
The NHC began advisories on Potential Tropical Cyclone Two. A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for Trinidad, Tobago, Grenada and its dependencies. Newly-designated Potential Tropical Cyclone Two is forecasted to become Tropilcal Storm Bonnie in 24 hours and a category one hurricane in 96 hours.
The Atlantic hurricane season started on June 1. The first named storm, Tropical Storm Alex, formed five days later in the Gulf of Mexico and produced heavy rainfall as it crossed Florida.
