FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ Another week, another area of potential storm development in the Atlantic.
Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center are watching a patch of weather in the far eastern Atlantic that so far has a slight chance of becoming a tropical cyclone.
Forecasters say an area of disorganized rain showers a few hundred miles south of the Cabo Verde Islands is moving west across the Atlantic. It was given a 20 percent chance of becoming a tropical cyclone over the next five days.
The potential system is depicted in a National Hurricane Center graphic as having the potential to form in the Central Atlantic. It could then continue west toward the southeast corner of the Caribbean Sea, an area that stretches roughly from the northern coast of Venezuela to the Barbados and also includes St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Meanwhile, the National Hurricane Center was set to take another look at the remains of Tropical Depression Four, which formed and then fizzled in the eastern and central Atlantic last week. Four's remains were still chugging along north of the eastern Caribbean, and a reconnaissance flight was scheduled to head out to that cluster of rain and clouds on Tuesday, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Unofficial weather sources like the Hurricane Tracker app were giving the former Tropical Depression Four a low 30 percent chance of re-development over the next five days.
The National Hurricane Center, as of Monday afternoon, wasn't forecasting its redevelopment.
Regardless, some of the so-called spaghetti models, which show a weather system's potential path, depicts the former depression's rain and clouds as heading to South Florida.
The National Weather Service's Miami-South Florida office said in an online post that the depression's remains will likely bring heavy thunderstorms to South Florida beginning Thursday.
"The next significant wave, the remnants of the former TD 4, will track across the area on Thursday, with the slower ECMWF (forecast model) not moving the wave through until later on Friday. PWATs (rainfall levels) look to rise to well over 2 inches with the wave, leading to numerous showers with embedded thunderstorms, some likely heavy, through the day Thursday and possibly lingering into Friday," the National Weather Service said.
"Not likely to become a TD or TS in the very near future, but it's something worth watching as the remnants are generally headed toward S Florida and the Eastern Gulf later this week," said a post Monday on the app.
In its 2 p.m. EDT Monday update, the National Hurricane Center hadn't designated the former tropical depression as an area of potential cyclone formation.
A tropical cyclone refers to an organized system of clouds and thunderstorms that rotates _ counter-clockwise in the Atlantic _ and has strong winds and a closed circulation, meaning it will have an eye. Tropical cyclones can take the form of a tropical depression, tropical storm, or hurricane.
The next named storm will be called "Don."
Since April the Atlantic basin, which includes the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, has seen three tropical storms: Arlene, Bret, and Cindy. Bret passed over southern Trinidad, causing flooding there, and northern Venezuela. Cindy was the only one to make U.S. landfall, coming ashore at the Texas-Louisiana border. It was blamed for at least one fatality, a 10-year-old boy who died after he was struck by debris along the Alabama coast.
So far, the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season has seen above average activity, as was predicted by government and academic experts. But forecasters also say that a busy start to a hurricane season has no bearing on the remainder of the season.
