Good morning. In the wake of Hurricane Bill, which passed hundreds of miles from the East Coast of the United States over the weekend, there are two disturbances that are being watched in the Atlantic Basin on Tuesday. Could one of them became the fourth named storm of 2009? The first one is located some 300 miles to the Northeast of San Juan, Puerto Rico in the Western Atlantic. This disturbance is a tropical wave that is interacting with an upper tropospheric trough, or an upper level low. Yesterday, there wasn’t much going on with this area of disturbed weather, but this morning, there are signs of better organization, and upper level winds in the vicinity of the disturbance are forecast to become more favorable over the next couple days.

Model tracks at this time indicate that the disturbance may follow a path similar to Bill, but right now it is too early to tell what the storm will do. One thing is for sure, the trough that has been hanging over the Eastern portion of the United States may be a positive in regard to Atlantic Tropical Storms and Hurricanes. Elsewhere around the Atlantic Basin, there is another area of disturbed weather in the Southwestern Caribbean sea. There is a broad area of low pressure that is centered near the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. However, due to its close proximity to the coast, the storm is not expected to develop before it moves inland over Central America.