Forecasters with the National Hurricane Center know that this is "go time" for the tropical Atlantic Basin. The past few days have seen areas of disturbed weather come and go. Over the weekend there were three different tropical trouble spots the Hurricane Center was watching for development.

All but one of those areas of disturbed weather has persisted and forecasters with the Hurricane Center are now classifying the systems as Potential Tropical Storm Six. The reason for the "not-quite-named" designation is so that weather offices in other countries, as well as our own, can begin issuing official watches and warnings ahead of the developing system.

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As of early this morning, Tropical Storm Warnings have been posted for Puerto Rico and the beaches of the Dominican Republic's eastern shore. Tropical Storm Watches extend further to the north and west into areas of the Bahamas as well.

Forecasters do think that PTC 6 will eventually become Tropical Storm Fred, that actually could happen sometime today. As of now, the track forecast from the Hurricane Center is very much in agreement with tropical model guidance.

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Most of the track model forecasts bring the system into the Gulf of Mexico by early Saturday morning as a tropical storm. Of course, in weather forecast time, there's a lot of room for error between today and Saturday. Still, most of the models are in agreement.

Where the system might go later in the weekend and early next week does remain up in the air. However, most guidance suggests the system will be more of an issue for the west coast of Florida than it will be for the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. But, this is not something we can write in stone at this juncture.

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There are some models that do bring the path of the storm much closer to Louisiana's coastline, so we will have to just wait and see. What we do know is that we have tons of time to watch and wait and plan. Hopefully, those plans won't be called into action but it's always a good idea to have a plan anyway.

We will keep you up to speed with daily updates on the storm system's progress so do check back often.

Meanwhile, if you were contemplating a road trip to get away from the tropical heat, you might want to take a drive right here.

See the Must-Drive Roads in Every State

 

 

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