The 5-day outlook from the National Hurricane Center shows two areas of possible development. One is off the East Coast with a little low along a front that could spin up over the warm Gulf Stream. That would not affect most of the Southeast other than the immediate coast, and it has only a 10 percent chance of developing. The other area is down in the southern Gulf of Mexico in the Bay of Campeche, and that has a 50 percent chance of developing into a tropical depression by next weekend. There was a nice video discussion about the likelihood of that developing at https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/ on the top of the home page that you might be interested in listening to. Other resources I like are Bryan Norcross’ page on Facebook and the National Hurricane Center at https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/. I also like https://spaghettimodels.com/ for having a lot of maps in one spot.
There is a lot of uncertainty with the development of this storm (and it might not even happen) so you will want to keep an eye on it because it could bring rain to parts of the northern Gulf Coast or even other parts of the Southeast later. Nothing to plan for at this point, but definitely something to watch. I hope you have already firmed up your pre-tropical season planning by now, but if not, this is a great time to do it. I listed a bunch of guides at https://site.extension.uga.edu/climate/2021/05/atlantic-hurricane-season-starts-june-1/ earlier this month.
There is also a big wave coming off of Africa today, but with the fairly cool ocean temperatures and the big dust cloud also coming off of Africa, there is almost no chance it will develop. It’s really too early in the season for much action from this part of the Atlantic, but it shows that waves are coming and so it is only a matter of time before we start to see some of the more classical tropical storm development occur.
