Meteorologists are monitoring the northwestern Caribbean, where there are growing signs that a storm could form. The system could develop toward the early or middle part of next week — and if it does, it could be primed to enter the Gulf of Mexico.

Water temperatures in the western Caribbean are close to 90 degrees, and oceanic heat content — a measure of how much hurricane fuel is contained in the warm ocean waters — is off the charts. While there is a lot of uncertainty about how the potential system would evolve, the prospect of any storm forming over this oceanic powder keg is concerning.

We’re still about seven to nine days away from any potential impact, and that’s if a system manages to form. There’s some chance that a named storm does not consolidate or that it ends up shifting farther west into Mexico.

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Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center estimate a 50 percent chance of eventual development, but those odds are steadily increasing. The next storm to be named will be called Helene.

The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season to date has been a peculiar one. While experts initially called for a hyperactive season, the Accumulated Cyclone Energy so far — that is, the total energy expended by storms — is actually below the norm.

But this season has also featured the earliest Category 5 hurricane on record — Beryl — which lay siege to the island of Carriacou in the Lesser Antilles on July 1. Houston got hit by it as a Category 1 a week later. Then Debby, Ernesto and Francine hit the Florida Panhandle, Bermuda and southeast Louisiana, respectively. Each were Category 1 or 2 hurricanes.

The conditions in the Caribbean

By Sunday, something called the CAG, or Central American Gyre, will become established over the western Caribbean, southwestern Gulf and the Yucatán Peninsula. In essence a broad, slowly-moving counterclockwise flow pattern in the upper atmosphere, its low pressure will foster the development of showers and thunderstorms. That will bring unsettled weather and heavy rains to the Yucatán, Honduras and Guatemala.

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The CAG forms a couple times a year, usually in the spring or autumn months, due to changes in trade winds and temperature across the tropics. It usually lasts three to five days. But it can sometimes help generate tropical storms, and this may be one of those times.

What will spawn a storm?

The pattern is a broad and diffuse pocket of spin at the mid levels of the atmosphere. But thunderstorms that sprout in its flow can help consolidate and tighten that spin and provide the seedling of a storm.

That may happen somewhere in the western Caribbean east of the Yucatán Peninsula Tuesday or Wednesday. But until that occurs — and any nascent system has a center to track — predicting how it will evolve is futile.

Where might that storm go?

Generally speaking, the system could move north or northwest. That’s because the CAG is like a big merry-go-round, and anything caught up in its flow will be pinwheeled around it accordingly.

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There is a good chance that the system ends up in the Gulf. But will it pass over the Yucatán and weaken? Or be steered over Cuba and fall apart before it can better organize?

Thereafter, it’s possible a storm will move into the Gulf and strengthen, but some weather models call for any potential system to stall in the Bay of Campeche.

Uncertainties about steering currents also make predicting anything about the hypothetical system’s track impossible.

A large number of simulations from both the American and European computer modeling systems show an enormous range of possibilities as to where any storm may end up in another week.

For now, know that conditions are ripe for a storm to form in the western Caribbean toward the midweek. Until it forms, it’s difficult to determine much about its possible strength or track.

Still, enough weather models paint scenarios that could involve a U.S. landfall, making this one to keep an eye on.