Update: Atlantic weather system 98L set to intensify, heading towards Gulf

Quantum Commodity Intelligence - A low-pressure weather system currently making its way across the Atlantic has been given a 90% chance of intensifying into a storm over the next few days, the US National Hurricane Center said Wednesday.

Although it is too early to say with any certainty that the system will make it into the Gulf of Mexico, the consensus among weather watchers is that the storm has a good chance of reaching the super-heated waters of the GoM by next week, although seen more likely threatening the eastern section.

In early European trading hours Wednesday, both Brent and WTI were around 3% higher but later retreated with tracking models putting the likely path of the storm away from energy facilities in the GoM. 

The system, currently designated as Invest 98L, is tracking towards the Windward Islands, north of Venezuela, and is then set to move toward the central Caribbean Sea later this week.

"A tropical wave is producing shower and thunderstorm activity a few hundred miles east of the southern Windward Islands. The system continues to show signs of organization and it will likely become a tropical depression within the next two or three days," the NHC said in a bulletin published Wednesday at 0200 EDT.
 
The NHC gave a 70% chance of storm formation in the next 48 hours and a 90% likelihood in the next five days.
 
The storm has been revitalised since the weekend when forecasters gave the disturbance a low chance for development as recently as Sunday.

Path
 
Weather watchers said that Category 4 Hurricane Fiona, to the north of 98L, was impacting the regional weather pattern and helping to steer the new tropical disturbance westward into the Caribbean through Wednesday.
 
There is still some wind sheer from Fiona threatening the development of 98L, but the system will move into a more favourable environment by the weekend and is likely to develop unimpeded.

The Global Forecast System (GFS) model currently shows the likely storm passing through the Yucatan Channel, the body of water between Mexico and Cuba, and therefore avoiding the weakening effects of passing over land.

European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecasting model has the storm crossing Cuba and making a second landfall in Florida before looping back along the US Atlantic coast.

Larry Cosgrove, Chief Meteorologist at WEATHERAmerica, who correctly forecasted the devastating track of Hurricane Ida last year, said that 98L was likely too far east to have a major impact on energy facilities in the Gulf.

"The approach of the storm next week will most likely affect Florida and the Eastern Seaboard, and could, at this point, become a major storm. But Henry Hub may be too far west to have much impact, aside from closures and restricted transportation until the center moves inland into the Southeast on or around September 30," said Cosgrove, referencing the Louisiana natural gas hub.

Weather watchers are also monitoring a tropical wave located several hundred miles west-southwest of the Cape Verde Islands.