Dangerous rains for Central America while the long-range forecast continues to be murky

A broad area of low pressure is forecast to develop over the next few days and ride up the spine of Central America. Regardless of how much organization the system attains, very heavy rain is expected to fall this week in Panama, Nicaragua, and Honduras. Northern Colombia is also likely to be affected.

The National Hurricane Center is giving the system a low chance of getting organized in the extreme southwestern Caribbean before it moves over the mountains of Central America.

The question is: What’s going to happen next week? Some part of what’s expected to be a broad low-pressure area stretching from the Pacific into the southwestern Gulf might get pulled north into the Gulf. Whether some kind of an organized system develops out of that or it’s just a stream of tropical moisture is unknowable at this point.

It’s also possible that the system that organizes, if one does, develops in the Pacific.

For now, the biggest concern is the heavy rain that is expected over the parts of Central America that were so hard hit by two strong hurricanes last November.

Whatever happens next week appears most likely to affect the western part of the Gulf well away from Florida.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Saharan dust season has begun. The brownish air shows up well on the satellite. The extra-dry air in the lower levels of the atmosphere helps to keep any systems from developing in the eastern Atlantic during the first part of the hurricane season.