A compact tropical disturbance is speeding west several hundred miles east of the southern Caribbean islands. When systems are caught in a fast-moving flow, they are less likely to be able to form an organized circulation, so the odds are low that this one will develop before it gets to the islands.
The disturbance is most likely to move through the islands about Tuesday as a moisture surge with gusty squalls with locally heavy rain. We’ll watch the system as it moves into the western Caribbean late in the week.
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The National Weather Service is also making note of a concentrated area of disturbed weather that has moved off Africa. It is far enough south that it can sneak under the layer of dry air that is dominating the eastern part of the tropical Atlantic.
It will take all week for the disturbance to reach the vicinity of the Caribbean islands. In between, the atmospheric conditions appear marginally conducive for the system to organize. It does not appear development can happen quickly, so again we’ll be watching this system later in the week.
Tropical Storm Kyle is no more. It has morphed into a wintertime-like low-pressure system in the North Atlantic.
Tropical Storm Josephine is being ripped apart by strong upper-level winds. The winds will become even more hostile moving forward, so Josephine is not expected to survive very long. The remnants of the system are still forecast to track north off the U.S. East Coast and be swept into the North Atlantic.
The new systems in the tropical Atlantic are the ones we closely watch this time of year. They develop at a low latitude, so their typical trajectory is such that they are more likely to affect land. The continued dry air over the eastern Atlantic is a bit of a mitigating factor at this point, but its effect should slowly taper off, if this year proceeds something like average. Saharan Dust outbreaks normally diminish around the middle of August.