Just one day after Hurricane Sally slammed the Florida Panhandle and Alabama, dumping as much as 30 inches of rain, forecasters with the National Hurricane Center said they are monitoring another system that could emerge in the Gulf of Mexico later this week.
Early Thursday morning, the area of disturbed weather was located in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico, just off the Mexican coast.
An Air Force Reserve reconnaissance aircraft will be sent to investigate the well-defined low-pressure system, which is becoming better organized and likely will strengthen into a tropical depression or tropical storm later Thursday.
The system is forecast to move through the southwestern Gulf before moving north to northeastward on Friday and Saturday, forecasters said.
If it develops more quickly than two others systems being monitored by the hurricane center, it would be named Tropical Storm Wilfred – the last alphabetically named storm of 2020. Any subsequent storms will be named through the Greek alphabet.
Forecasters continue to monitor two other named storms in the open Atlantic. Teddy could strengthen into a major hurricane, while Vicky is likely to weaken into a tropical depression in the next 24 hours. Neither is an immediate threat to land.
