Disturbance in the Caribbean could become ‘formidable’ storm. What South MS should know

An area of showers and thunderstorms in the Caribbean Sea could become another rare November hurricane next week, forecasters said, but its path is still unclear.

The disturbance is in the western Caribbean and will probably become a tropical depression by the end of this week, the National Hurricane Center said. It will meander over the western Caribbean this weekend then move northwest early next week. Forecasters said it has a 40 percent chance of forming within two days and an 80 percent chance of forming within a week.

Storms so late in the season are rare. But the disturbance could become “a formidable November hurricane,” Florida meteorologist Michael Lowry wrote in a newsletter. It would follow Hurricane Rafael, which pounded through the Caribbean last week and later fell apart in the Gulf of Mexico.

The disturbance will be named Sara if it strengthens.

It could take several paths. It could hit a cold front this weekend and be carried east and out to sea. It could linger inland over Central America. Or it could turn toward the Gulf of Mexico and possibly track toward Florida, Lowry said.

“Don’t take any forecast for next week as the final word,” Lowry wrote in the newsletter. “Expect swings – maybe big swings – in the forecast.”

The Caribbean is producing storms this deep in hurricane season because the ocean is still warm, said The Weather Channel meteorologist Jim Cantore.

“The lack of strong cold fronts and significant shear in the east has kept this part of the season going, and this next threat will be no different,” Cantore wrote on social media.

Hurricane season ends Nov. 30.

The disturbance poses no immediate threat to South Mississippi. The National Weather Service in Slidell said it was “way too early” to know where the system will go or how strong it will get.

It asked residents of Louisiana and the Mississippi Coast to keep checking the forecast.