looks like the tropics don't want to take the rest of may off..
some kind of low pressure area--maybe a sheared/lopsided tropical cyclone or maybe one of those not quite closed trough lows--is getting busy developing in the nw caribbean near the coast of belize tonight. most of the globals are showing its continued evolution and perhaps a baroclinic deepening run as it moves nne towards florida. whether a system forms or not florida is in for one of those significant tropical rain events.
it's hard to say how things will play out with how complicated things are on the eastpac side. barbara got its act together over the last couple of days and is a small system embedded in one of those monsoon trough environments that extends eastward from weakening alvin, to central america and across to the synoptically favorable environment east of the digging upper trough over the western caribbean. interestingly another small vorticity max system is hanging near the coast of el salvador, perhaps stealing a bit of barbara's fire. barbara is not dominating and controlling the larger-scale atmospheric motions in the monsoon trough, so it is not strengthening quickly, but it appears that it will eventually get organized as well, and threaten mexico. barbara taking its time is probably important for preserving the environment that may allow an atlantic system to organize and threaten florida, as a strong system with an impressive outflow would likely undo the positive but challenging upper air conditions to the east.
this is sort of remarkable, that here at the end of may we are seeing another potential tropical development on the atlantic side, which may end up being a cross-basin triplet with the pacific systems induced by either an mjo burst or one of those easterly surges in the tropical pacific. keep an eye to the northwest caribbean for the next two days as something may quickly spring up, in the manner that arlene did in early june 2005.
may have to go to another thread tomorrow.
HF 0322z31may