First storm of 2025 Atlantic hurricane season could develop before June

While the Atlantic hurricane season doesn’t officially begin until June 1, the FOX Forecast Center will be monitoring the Caribbean Sea during the second half of May for any signs of preseason development.Computer model forecasts suggest a broad area of low pressure could develop in the vicinity of Central America by late next week and into the following weekend.“There is consensus among the various computer model forecasts that a broad area of low pressure will develop from the Pacific across Central America to Colombia,” FOX Weather Hurricane Specialist Bryan Norcross said.Any potential tropical threat could be linked to a phenomenon known as the Central American Gyre, which has historically contributed to tropical storm formation in the Caribbean or the Gulf in late spring or early fall.The gyre is a sprawling area of low pressure that feeds off moisture streaming in from the Pacific Ocean and forms near or over Central America.At its core, it is a heavy rain producer with impacts extending outwards hundreds of miles and leading to threats of torrential rainfall, flooding, and landslides for more than a dozen countries in and around Central America.In some cases, organized low-pressure centers can develop within the large gyre if water temperatures and upper-level winds become favorable for tropical development.Both early and late in the hurricane season – or sometimes even before and after the official six-month season – are the periods most notorious for allowing a tropical disturbance to break away from Central America and form into a tropical depression or storm in either the Eastern Pacific, Bay of Campeche (southwestern Gulf) or western Caribbean Sea.However, Norcross cautioned that the odds of any system tracking north or northeastward into the southern Gulf as a tropical depression or storm are low.“The GFS (American model) is an outlier in pulling an organized system north into the Caribbean and developing a trop...