3:00pm CST Tropical Update:
Tropical Storm Rafael has formed:
PTC 18 was officially designated on Sunday and while there's still a lot of uncertainty it will be a storm we'll need to watch over the week.
As of Monday morning there was no center of circulation but winds were still at tropical storm strength, and Hurricane Hunters will return to investigate the storm.
If a center is found it will get the name Rafael and will likely strengthen over the next few days.
Strengthening is likely to occur as it moves across the Caribbean and it will eventually reach Cat 1 strength as it crosses over the Cayman Islands on the way to Cuba.
By the middle of the week it will be moving into the southern Gulf of Mexico which is when the forecast confidence really begins to break down.
Models seem split in forcing it to move hard west and eventually toward Mexico, or drifting north toward the central Gulf Coast.
The reason for the lack of confidence is stemming from trying to predict two different features a ridge to the east and an approaching trough to the west.
If the ridge is strong enough it will force the storm to stay in the southern Gulf and away from the coast, but depending on the speed in which the trough approaches from the east it may start to eat away at the ridge.
That would allow the storm to get caught up in the trough and pulled north toward the central Gulf Coast.
Either way we'll expect an increase in shear which will do a couple of different things: one it will prevent the storm from further strengthening and eventually will start to weaken it.
The other is will blow a lot of the impacts east of the center which is where models predict most of the rain will end up.
Until we get a better idea of the track it will be impossible to start talking about specific impacts so we'll hold off on that for now.
So for now it's something to keep an eye on and monitor over the next couple of days.
