By Jim Bradshaw



Two systems bubbling up in the Gulf of Mexico have grabbed the attention of storm forecasters. A small and weak area of low pressure named Invest 95 by the National Hurricane Center was about 100 miles south of Morgan City early Monday.

It has only a small chance of developing into anything dangerous, but is likely to bring a good bit of moisture to much of south Louisiana over the coming week with gusty winds near the coast.

This system was moving toward the north at about five miles per hour on Monday morning and was expected to reach the Louisiana coast Monday night or early Tuesday.

The bigger of the two concerns is an area of disturbed weather, Invest 96, in the northwestern Caribbean off the coast of the Yucatan. This system does appear to be in a better environment for further development.

The National Hurricane Center on Monday morning gave it a forty percent chance of turning into at least a tropical depression over the next several days. That was down from a fifty percent chance on Sunday.

As with Alex, computer models are again having trouble figuring just what this system will do. Some of them develop it into Tropical Storm Bonnie, but not a hurricane. Most of them tend to send it on approximately the same course followed by Alex toward south Texas, but a few predict a Louisiana landfall.

Forecasters say the system is too disorganized and it is too early to make any certain prediction of intensity or landfall.

The overall weather pattern for the middle and end of the week, when the system will be in the Gulf of Mexico, suggests a building ridge of high pressure over the northern Gulf that will tend to steer any system toward Texas, rather than Louisiana.

The waters of the gulf are a bit warmer, up to four degrees, than normal for this time of year, which forecasters are concerned will help fuel the busy hurricane season.

The hurricane center is also keeping an eye on cluster of thunderstorms in the Atlantic near the Leeward Islands but gives it only a ten percent chance of developing.

A disturbance becomes a tropical depression when a distinct pattern of circulation can be seen and sustained wind speeds are 38 miles per hour or less. Disturbances become tropical storms and are given names when they reach a sustained wind speed of 39 mph. Tropical storms become hurricanes when sustained winds reach 74 mph.