Could expected Gulf tropical system affect Alabama?

It's still too soon to say if a tropical disturbance expected to form in the Gulf of Mexico this week could affect Alabama.

One of the reasons is it hasn't even formed yet.

But forecasters have reasonable confidence that it will, and it could become a tropical depression, or stronger, and head generally northward later this week.

"We will continue to monitor trends closely and we urge residents and visitors across the entire Gulf Coast to continue to monitor the forecast over the coming days," the National Weather Service in Mobile said in its Sunday morning forecast discussion.

Could it become a hurricane? A tropical storm? Will it organize at all?

And where could it go?

These are all still unanswered questions as of Sunday, according to the weather service.

"Unfortunately, there still remains a lot of uncertainty when it comes to the strength, timing, and trajectory of this system," forecasters at the weather service in Mobile said in their forecast discussion on Sunday morning.

Why all the attention on something that hasn't even happened yet?

Anytime a tropical disturbance moves into the Gulf of Mexico it's worth watching. And it's near the climatological peak of the hurricane season. And conditions in the Gulf would seem to support anything forming there to intensify, with an abundance of very warm water for fuel and lighter wind shear.

The National Hurricane Center was keeping a close eye on the northwestern Caribbean and southern Gulf on Sunday. Forecasters said there is a high probability (70 percent) of a tropical depression forming, likely in the southern Gulf, in the next week.

A system has to have a defined center and winds of at least 39 mph to be considered a tropical storm and get a name. The next name on the 2024 Atlantic storm list is Helene.

Forecasters were seeing signs of a disturbance beginning to develop on Sunday, and the weather service indicated that something "trackable" could form by late Monday or Tuesday. And it could move into the southern Gulf by Wednesday.

Effects from the storm could affect parts of the Gulf Coast by later this week.

The weather service is also seeing hints that whatever forms could be a large system, which means more areas could be subject to wind, rain and surge from it.

Weather watchers have been circulating various model tracks for days showing various areas along the U.S. Gulf Coast facing a landfalling storm later this week.

But all those possible tracks are merely speculation at this point.

"Although we are starting to see the signs that a trackable feature may soon be forming, as of right now models are still unsure of what to latch onto," the weather service said.

" ... when this lack of data gets inputted into the various models and then we look out at the solutions 5-7 days out, this leads to a plethora of inaccuracies within each model run that ultimately affects the model run's overall output. This is why there continues to be so much run-to-run and model-vs-model variability in the overall strength, trajectory, and timing of this storm."

Once the disturbance establishes itself, it will provide a lot more data to be fed into computer forecast models to formulate track and intensity forecasts.

Forecasters will be watching the evolution of the disturbance, but also will have eyes on weather systems in the United States that could help steer the tropical system's track.

One of those is an area of high pressure that is expected to be situated over the Southeast U.S. Forecasters will also be watching a trough of low pressure that will be moving into the Midwest. Models also had been forecasting an area of low pressure to become cut off from that trough, but as of Sunday that seemed less likely to happen.

That cutoff low would be important, according to the weather service, because it could have steered the tropical disturbance more toward the west.

But instead, models (as of today, that is) are leaning toward a stronger trough of low pressure, which could indicate a more eastward path for the yet-to-develop disturbance.

But don't take that to the bank yet.

"With that being said, these sudden changes in model guidance tells me that the upper features at play are extremely complex and fickle and, at this time, any one model run should not be taken at face value, especially since we still do not have a trackable feature," the weather service said Sunday.

"Expect models tracks to continue to shift back and forth a bit longer until guidance has a better handle of the system and the upper features at play, and by that time, we can begin focusing on our local impacts."