The National Hurricane Center is tracking a “disturbance” that could intensify in the coming days.
A tropical system and the heavy rains accompanying it could lead to flash flooding across Florida and other parts of the coastal Southeast this weekend.
Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center said there is a 60 percent chance that the system will organize into a tropical depression in the next few days somewhere off the coast of Florida, Georgia or the Carolinas.
As of Thursday morning, forecasters said the system was not likely to grow strong enough to become a tropical storm. If it did, it would become Tropical Storm Chantal, the third named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season.
Regardless of whether that happens, parts of Florida should expect to see prolonged rainy conditions, according to the forecasters at the Tampa Bay office of the National Weather Service. The rain began on Wednesday and is expected to last through the weekend, with totals most likely reaching three to five inches across the central west coast of the Florida Peninsula by the time it ends.
It was still uncertain how much rain might fall on the east coast of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
Those forecast details will be heavily dependent on the position, strength and timing of the potential storm system, according to forecasters at the Weather Service office in Charleston, S.C. So far, they have predicted isolated thunderstorms, typical for this time of year. But if a depression or tropical storm were to develop, they said, there would most likely be much more rain.
The Atlantic hurricane season started on June 1 and runs through Nov. 30. After a slow start, there have been two tropical storms so far: Andrea, which formed on June 24 and dissipated a day later, and Barry, which formed in the Gulf on Sunday just off Mexico’s coast before making landfall that night.
