It's been over two months since the Atlantic hurricane season started and we are still without a named storm, making 2009 one of the ten latest starting seasons in the past 50 years. Proving just how erratic the tropics are, after 2005 many were calling the activity on global warming, but the past 4 years have showed that there is often little predictability in the tropics.

For those who enjoy following these storms it's been a dull year thus far but light beckons, as the Atlantic seems to be heating up and there are currently 3 areas of disturbed weather, of which one is "Code Orange", this is an area which has 30-50% potential in becoming a tropical depression in 48 hours of the issuing of the code. Below you can see that the 3 areas of disturbed weather, with the eastern most wave, near the Cape Verdes being the most likely for development.

Models show the code orange disturbance which has been assigned as Invest 99L developing as a weak storm and heading along the east coast of the United States. The models are also suggesting the development of a possible hurricane over the next week or so as the next tropical wave emerges off Africa and moves into favourable conditions for development. There are numerous models which support this development including the CMC, EURO, GFS and others. The EURO and GFS are both the more aggressive models, it is important to note that this year the CMC/Canadian model got some tweaks and is now supposed to be less aggressive than it's previous phantom category 5 self.

 Above is the ECMWF/EURO model and below the GFS model, the EURO is at 240 hours, the GFS at 324 hours.

I'd keep an eye on the tropics over the next 2 weeks as things are bound to get heated up.