Watching the Tropics?

February typically is not a time to watch what is going on in the tropics, as hurricane season does not even begin until June 1st. There is however, an interesting feature to watch near the Yucatan Channel. This is the satellite view of the Gulf as of early Sunday afternoon.

A weak area of low pressure is forming along a trough of low pressure extending from the Southeast Gulf into the NW Caribbean. Thunderstorm activity has increased somewhat Sunday morning near the poorly defined area of low pressure. While conditions for tropical development are typically hostile this time year, there is actually a small window of opportunity for this small system to become a tropical cyclone.
Sea surface temperatures are marginally warm enough near the Channel for development with sea surface temperatures around 26C (about 79F). Note that water temperatures across most of the Gulf are too cold for development.

A factor that strongly inhibits tropical development during the early part of the year is strong upper level Westerly winds creating great amounts of wind shear. The shear is fairly strong across most of the Gulf, but actually quite weak across the far Southeast Gulf. The image below indicates forecast wind shear for Sunday evening, with the darker blue areas showing weak shear.

If this system manages to reach tropical cyclone status ( and that is a pretty big IF ), it would be the second tropical system in the Atlantic Basin during the month of February. The last time this happened was in 1952 with the Groundhog Day Tropical Storm, which struck South Florida. This system developed in the Northwest Caribbean, then intensified before accelerating toward South Florida and out into the Atlantic. Below is the track of the Groundhog Day Tropical Storm.

Overall, this system is not much of a threat to anyone, but rather a curiosity since there has not been a February tropical cyclone in the Atlantic in six decades. Even if the system does become classified, the main affect on land from the system would be some potentially heavy rainfall across parts of the FL peninsula through Tuesday morning. Increasing wind shear and cooler sea surface temperatures near the West Coast of Florida would limit any significant intensification.