FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ Forecasters said Tuesday afternoon that a large system of storms along Florida's northeast coast had a 40 percent chance of developing into a tropical cyclone.
"This system is very close to having the organization required of a tropical cyclone," according to a Tropical Weather Outlook issued by the Miami-based National Hurricane Center on Tuesday afternoon.
According to the hurricane center, an area of low pressure near Daytona Beach on Tuesday afternoon was bringing showers and thunderstorms and packing tropical storm-force winds along the northeast Florida coast.
The system was expected to move northwestward at 10 to 15 mph, near and parallel to the state's northeast coast, forecasters said.
The system was given a 40 percent chance of developing into a tropical cyclone over the next 48 hours, and a 40-percent chance of developing over the next five days.
If the system were to become a tropical storm, it would be named Julia.
"Even if it were to get a name, we don't think it has much of a chance of being very strong," said James Franklin, chief of forecasting operations at the National Hurricane Center.
After being given no chance of development earlier in the day, satellite imagery, radar data and surface observations had changed that outlook by the afternoon. Franklin said the disturbance "hugged the coast" through the morning and stayed more organized than originally anticipated.
According to the National Hurricane Center's website, a tropical cyclone is a "rotating, organized system of clouds and thunderstorms that originates over tropical or subtropical waters and has a closed low-level circulation."
Tropical cyclones can take the form of a tropical depression, characterized by maximum sustained winds of at 38 mph or less, a tropical storm, with maximum sustained winds of 39 mph to 73 mph, or a hurricane, which is a tropical cyclone with maximum sustained winds of 74 mph or higher.
Even if the system doesn't develop into a storm, a Tropical Weather Outlook from the hurricane center said that "strong gusty winds will continue over portions of the northeast Florida coast (Tuesday), and heavy rains will continue to spread over central and northern Florida (Tuesday) and (Tuesday night)."
Meanwhile, farther out in the Atlantic, Tropical Storm Ian was churning in its second day, and showed not much change in terms of its strength. Whereas Ian's maximum sustained winds on Monday were 40 mph, on Tuesday afternoon they were 45 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The storm, which was about 800 miles southeast of Bermuda on Tuesday afternoon, posed no threat to land, the hurricane center said. It was not expected to become a hurricane.
With tropical storm-force winds extending 230 miles from its center, Ian was moving toward the north-northwest and was expected to turn toward the north and north-northeast over the next two days.
The hurricane center was also monitoring another disturbance off the African coast. A tropical wave a few hundred miles southeast of the Cape Verde Islands was given a 50 percent chance of development over the next five days.
