A large thunderstorm complex that moved off southeastern Louisiana late last week combined with a mid-level spin over the northern Gulf to produce a small but punchy surface low that could become a short-lived tropical depression or storm later today or early Tuesday before moving inland over the Upper Texas Coast.
The next name on the list is Edouard.
Quick hitter
The system – designated Invest 97L – was first introduced by the National Hurricane Center in its outlook Friday evening with only 10% development odds, but it took advantage of a pocket of light upper-level winds and the August Gulf warmth to make quick work of conducive conditions. By Sunday evening, 97L was showing signs of organization just south of the Louisiana coast and NHC ratcheted up development odds to high.
If 97L doesn’t form in the coming hours, the National Hurricane Center will likely designate it a Potential Tropical Cyclone, a procedural move that would allow for the issuance of tropical storm watches or warnings ahead of its approach to southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana tomorrow.
Locally heavy rain for southeastern Texas
While we always keep a wary eye on tropical systems near land this time of year, forecast models almost unanimously keep 97L or what forms from it weak (low to mid-tier tropical storm at most) over the next 24 hours before it moves inland.
For now, what’s poised to become Tropical Storm Edouard isn’t expected to pose a damaging wind threat or widespread heavy rain and flood threat this week. The primary hazard will be locally heavy rain that could lead to scattered, mainly localized flash flooding for parts of southeast Texas along and east of the I-45 corridor from Tuesday through early Thursday.
Areas affected include the Houston-Galveston metro over the Beaumont and Lake Charles in southwestern Louisiana and inland areas of East Texas east of Bryan-College Station.
As always, we’ll keep an eye on the trends for an overachieving storm but this appears to be a manageable homegrown system that could bring beneficial rains to parts of Texas that remain in moderate drought.
Dolly’s remnants moving through the islands, but re-development not expected
The remnants of short-lived Tropical Storm Dolly from late last week were spreading across parts of the Greater Antilles early Monday, including Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. Though localized heavy rainfall could cause some flooding issues, especially in the mountains, the rainfall is mostly a good news story for the drought-stricken Caribbean.
Dolly’s remnants will track toward South Florida for Thursday where it will reinforce our wet pattern this week. The now-tropical-wave’s interaction with the mountainous speed bumps of the islands will nix any redevelopment potential in the days ahead. Nearly all models have dropped any redevelopment signal, including the insistently bullish (and wrong) American GFS and UKMET models.
No, a hurricane isn’t headed for Southern California
The hotbed for tropical activity this year has been over on the Pacific side, where waters are at record or near-record warmth, not just in the El Niño region near the equator but farther north off the coasts of Mexico and Southern California.
Tropical systems typically don’t survive north of around 30 degrees north latitude in the eastern Pacific, primarily because of much cooler waters and stable air associated with the cold California Current. Although Southern California and the Desert Southwest are no strangers to dying tropical systems and surges of residual tropical moisture during the late summer and early fall, direct threats from organized tropical storms or hurricanes are extremely rare. The last tropical storm to make landfall in Southern California was in 1939.
A strong tropical disturbance designated Invest 95E in the eastern Pacific – located about 1,500 miles south-southeast of San Diego – is getting some attention out west because of long-range forecasts from the American GFS suggesting the possibility of a hurricane threat to Southern California in about a week.
While 95E will probably organize into a hurricane later this week, our more reliable models (not the GFS and not the ICON) suggest higher chances it moves out to sea than northward toward the California coast. Even so, if it took the less likely track northward and in the direction of California, it would be as a quick-weakening tropical cyclone, not a hurricane.
It may be something to follow for the potential of increased rainfall for parts of California next week if it’s pulled farther north, but right now those scenarios closer to California are a less likely outcome.
Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com - All rights reserved.
