I first blogged yesterday about an area of disturbed weather that had formed off the East Coast of Florida. In the last 24-30 hours, the system drifted and/or reformed to the West of the peninsula, and is now located in a broad area extending from southern Florida through the extreme Southeast Gulf of Mexico (as noted by the yellow circle in the above satellite image).
This system, which was dubbed "Tropical Invest 94L" by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) yesterday, is drifting slowly West/Northwest at this time.
Computer forecast models are a bit split at the moment, with a little more than half of them forecasting the system to impact the U.S. Coast In Louisiana (just South and West of where Katrina made landfall a few years ago) and the remainder forecasting the system to move West toward Texas. It is still early in the game, so residents all along the Gulf Coast should remain on a high state of alert as we see what 94L does the remainder of the week.
At this time, it doesn't appear that there will be a significant "steering" mechanism that will be in place toward the middle and end of the week over the Gulf, so I could literally see either of the above solutions verifying. The key will be how quickly the system organizes in the next 36-48 hours, and where exactly the dominant center of circulation will form during that time.
Assuming 94L is the next system to be deemed at least a Tropical Storm, it will be called "Danielle".
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