Tropical Disturbance in Caribbean Worth Watching

Invest 93L Bringing Heavy Rains to Cayman Islands; Could Threaten Florida Early Next Week

The Tropical Atlantic continues to bustle with activity despite the fact that the calendar says it is June, and normally things aren’t that busy yet. With Bonnie beginning to depart from the scene, more of a focus has been placed on the disturbance in the Caribbean. Now classified as Invest 93L, the disturbance has been looking better and brining lots of rain to the Caymans, but is still poorly organized.

However, the models have been indicating that this storm will become a tropical cyclone, and bring a good deal of rain to Florida early next week. According to discussions earlier on Saturday afternoon, there is a 70 percent chance that this disturbance located near the Yucatan Peninsula, but is spreading rains across much of the Caribbean, will develop into a tropical cyclone within the next 70 hours, and has an 80 percent chance of development over the next five days.

Low pressure is expected to form along with these showers and thunderstorms in the Northwestern Caribbean, and gradually move northward into the Central and Eastern portions of the Gulf of Mexico, and develop into either a depression or tropical storm early next week. Whether this scenario comes about remains to be seen, but there will most likely be a good deal of rainfall for the Yucatan, Western Cuba, the Florida Keys, and even parts of mainland Florida itself early next week.

On Friday morning, forecast models were indicating very high QPF amounts for Florida over the next week, which translates into a ton of rainfall. The National Weather Service in Jacksonville, Florida indicated that rainfall amounts from widespread rain and thunderstorms could range anywhere from two inches in Southeastern Georgia to six inches in places near Orlando and Ocala in Central Florida. There also could be isolated amounts between 7 to 10 inches across portions of the Sunshine State.

Within the past 24 to 36 hours, those numbers have been downgraded a bit by NWS Jacksonville to only be anywhere from an inch and two thirds in Southeastern Georgia to about four inches near Ocala. If this disturbance does get strong and organized enough to become a tropical storm, it will be named Colin, the third named storm of the year already in the Atlantic. Keep in mind that it would only be the end of the very first week of the official season calendar. So, the various season predictions look pretty much on the money for a active year.