Over the past few days, an area of disturbed weather has made its way from the central Caribbean, across the Yucatan peninsula, and is now over the southern Gulf of Mexico.
It is still disorganized, but could congeal into a tropical cyclone within the next couple of days. A reconnaissance aircraft is currently scheduled to fly into it on Sunday if it continues to look suspicious. The water temperatures in the western Gulf are very warm (see below) -- more than enough to sustain any amount of development, but for now, it's battling some vertical wind shear. That shear probably won't relax too much until it's close to land.
Models are in excellent agreement on a WNW track, bringing it to the Mexican coast near Tampico on Monday, probably as a weak storm, but loaded with the potential for heavy rain.
If upgraded, this would become Tropical Depression Four, or even Tropical Storm Danielle. And if it actually does manage to intensify to a tropical storm before it reaches Mexico, it would be the earliest fourth tropical storm on record, beating Debby 2012 (June 23) and Dennis 2005 (July 5). Recall that Colin recently just broke the record for earliest third tropical storm formation!
Using a climatology of the past 50 years (1966-2015), the
average date of 4th named storm formation is August 24th!
