A wave of stormy weather known as Invest 92L has a “high chance” of strengthening into a tropical depression by Tuesday in the Atlantic Ocean, according to the National Weather Service in Miami.
The scattered weather system has an 80% chance of sharpening toward tropical depression status by Tuesday and a 90% chance of doing so by next Sunday, an NWS forecaster said.
“Right now, it’s just an area of disturbed weather in the middle of the Atlantic,” NWS meteorologist George Rizzuto said Sunday. “At this time, it has a high chance of development in the next two days.”
What’s an invest, anyway? We explain and break down the weather forecaster’s term
The “invest,” a term which refers to an area of investigation, is located between Africa and the Caribbean, in what forecasters call the Main Development Region of the Atlantic. As of 8 a.m. Sunday, it was several hundred miles southwest of the Cabo Verde Islands off west Africa, and heading west at 15 to 20 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.
“It’s moving generally west right now. The models show it taking a turn to the right around five days from now,” Rizzuto said.
An “invest” weather system can evolve into a tropical cyclone, then a tropical depression or segue directly to depression status, he said.
“It depends on how it evolves,” Rizzuto said, who described the system as “still rather disorganized.”
Still, the system’s expected development in the Main Development Region is unusual for this time of year. Most storms in June and July form closer to the United States, in the Gulf of Mexico or the northeast Caribbean Sea.
“But it’s not totally impossible,” Rizzuto said.
Forecasters say it is too early to tell if the system will affect the United States.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Tropical wave Invest 92L has ‘high chance’ of developing this week