No one's talking about it, but Thomas is as of noon today.

Looking at the latest visible satellite imagery we have a disturbed area of weather in the SW Caribbean Sea east of Nicaragua and Panama.

In any event a couple of days or so ago I began mentioning the probability of a Western Caribbean/Gulf Of Mexico tropical cyclone threat. October-November is basically our local tropical cyclone season. Basically we get splitting and SW backing into the GOM of mid level cold core longwave troughs and associated surface cold fronts and subtropical jet stream mid level shortwave troughs. These temperate mid latitude non tropical weather systems sit out over the still very warm North America ocean waters and transform and grow into warm core tropical systems.

Bottom line we need to watch this disturbance because it will "possibly" grow into a future Tropical Cyclone Matthew and threaten all of the Gulf Coast, but particularly the mid and eastern Gulf Coast from New Orleans to Key West. To jog our memories, remember CAT 5 Opal in 1995? She was a local home grown tropical cyclone.

Take Care,
Thomas F. Giella
Retired Space & Atmospheric Weather Forecaster
Plant City, FL