Two Atlantic low-pressure systems head towards Caribbean

Quantum Commodity Intelligence – The US National Hurricane Center has maintained its forecast for the low-pressure weather system currently making its way across the Atlantic, giving the system a 40% chance of intensifying into a storm within the next five days.

The system, currently designated as Invest 95L, is tracking towards the Lesser Antilles chain of islands that make up the eastern Caribbean.

"Disorganized showers and thunderstorms continue in association with a tropical wave located over the tropical Atlantic, about 850 miles east of the Lesser Antilles. Some slow development of this disturbance is possible later this week and this weekend while the system moves westward to west-northwestward at 15 to 20 mph, likely reaching the Lesser Antilles by Wednesday night," the NHC said in a bulletin published at 0800 EDT.

The NHC put the chances of storm formation in the next 48 hours at 30% and 40% within the next five days.

However, should the system be upgraded to a tropical storm, weather watchers say there is still a long way to go with wind shear potentially disrupting the intensification process.

Additionally, storms at this time of the year are typically less threatening, with the more powerful storms usually from August onwards as the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico waters heat up.  

The latest models have 95L tracking towards Hispaniola, the mountainous island that hosts the Dominican Republic and Haiti. A weak storm could easily disintegrate over mountains, or should the storm turn north it will take a path towards the US east coast.

If 95L, or potentially tropical storm Elsa, makes it past Hispaniola and into the Caribbean Sea, it is likely to strengthen over the warmer waters. But to make it into the US Gulf, any storm needs to traverse through the Yucatan Channel, the body of water between Mexico and Cuba.

Meanwhile, a second low-pressure system hot on the heels of 95L has been designated 97L by the NHC. The second system is expected to take a more southerly path than 95L, giving it a better chance of making it into the Caribbean Sea.

in its later 2pm EDT bulletin, the NHC increased the chances of Invest 97L strengthening to a storm in the next 5 days to 40%, up from 20% in its 8am EDT report. 

In May the US government agency, NOAA Climate Prediction Center, forecasted another above-normal Atlantic hurricane season in 2021.

The record 2020 hurricane season had a devastating impact on the oil and gas sector, with storms like Marco, Laura and Sally ripping through the Gulf of Mexico and making landfall along the US Gulf coast, which hosts much of the US oil and gas infrastructure.