Within the last day, we christened our eighth named storm of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season: Tropical Storm Helene formed from the remnants of Tropical Depression Seven Friday (that's right, the eighth named storm was born out of the seventh depression while the seventh named storm was born out of the eighth depression). The system, closely hugging the coastline of Mexico in the southwest Gulf, is now a tropical depression and very disorganized over mainland Mexico. That said, as a front moves into the southeast US and stalls early next week, we'll watch for some the remnant tropical moisture lifting northward into the central Gulf coast region; regardless of any redevelopment, significant rain is likely over a large swath of the southeast (but likely not here in central Florida). We'll tackle the wet weather likely in the southeast in the week ahead in a blog post tomorrow or Monday.

Let's move on to the "main event" for this post though: Invest 94. The large tropical wave is currently located near 30W and 14N, that is to say way out there in the Atlantic. In fact, like TD 7/Helene, this is likely to be a long-tracked system over the open waters of the Atlantic. But what kind of storm will it be?

Some of the "negative" factors for tropical development ae still prominent in the Atlantic: lots of dry, dusty Saharan Desert air and strong vertical wind shear. This wind shear sits in a belt across the Atlantic: from Central America, through the Caribbean, and into the eastern Atlantic along 15-25 N latitude. That means any storm that moves north of 15 N in the central or eastern Atlantic will likely fall victim to wind shear and dry air while a storm marching into the Caribbean will likely feel the buzzsaw of strong westerly wind shear. That's not to say that shear won't abate some in the coming days, but the overall pattern favors that belt of shear remaining in place.

Despite the dry air and shear, several of our forecast models have been ramping up a very strong system in the central Atlantic later this week and marching it toward the eastern Caribbean. The latest run of the American model, though, and several consecutive runs of the European have been much less bullish -- showing a much weaker system moving toward the Leeward or Windward Islands by the middle of next week. Given the environment in the Atlantic right now, this is the idea I favor. This would also mean a storm that is guided largely westward by an upper level ridge and feels less of a "tug" from fronts/troughs to the north -- in other words, this is a system that can come farther west toward the United States rather than curving out to sea.

What intensity it will ultimately be once in the Caribbean/western Atlantic/or even Gulf is very uncertain at this point. Remember, TD 7 was shredded apart by the wind shear in the Atlantic before it had a chance to become Gordon; it's not out of the realm of possibility the same thing happens to Invest 94. We'll have to watch it closely. Overall, though, this will be a long-tracked system that's worth watching, but it will have to "do battle" with some pretty strong players in the Atlantic that have the potential to have a weakening effect on the system!

Brian Monahan