Tropical Storm Ernesto continues to team west over the Caribbean, moving at a pretty good clip. It will spend the next 24 hours tracking south of Hispaniola and will be south of Jamaica by tomorrow afternoon.
It looks a little better on satellite photos this evening, which makes sense because it is moving into an area of lessening shear.
It is increasingly moving into an area that is more favorable for intensification and the system will become a hurricane at some point as it moves into the western Caribbean. By Wednesday, it should make landfall on the Yucatan. The big question then will be the weakness over the southeastern United States. Will it be strong enough to turn the hurricane more northward? That appears to be a real possibility.
There is not good agreement among the models as to whether the storm will take a track toward northern Mexico or extreme South Texas, or take a more northwesterly track toward the Central Texas Coast. The picture should become clearer as we head through the weekend.
Many folks who have vacations planned this coming week are understandably concerned. There is no reason to cancel any plans at this time, but everyone will want to pay attention to updated forecasts in coming days. A track into the Central Gulf would of course cause increasingly rough conditions along the coast.
FLORENCE? A tropical wave over the far eastern Atlantic has a well developed low pressure system with it. It has just been designated Tropical Depression Six. This system has a chance to become Tropical Storm Florence in the near future. The good news is that the models tend to all agree that it will take a west northwesterly track carrying it north of the islands later this week and may not even survive that long as it faces some conditions that are hostile for development.
GORDON/HELENE: And the GFS predicts that we may see another couple of named storms in the next ten days over the eastern Atlantic. Hopefully, the East Coast trough will remain and protect the U.S.
