A low-pressure system approaching Florida is likely to become a tropical depression within 24 hours and potentially Tropical Storm Bertha within seven days, forecasters said Sunday.
Forecasters with the National Hurricane Center advised that tropical storm watches could go into effect later Sunday for parts of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana along the Gulf coast.
The system moved off Florida’s west coast on Friday, drenching Tampa Bay, and “has since moved over the warm waters of the eastern Gulf, where it has begun to develop signs of a circulation, at least in the upper atmosphere,” according to AccuWeather.
An Air Force Reserve reconnaissance crew is set to investigate the low-pressure area later Sunday. In its latest advisory, the hurricane center gave it a 80% chance of developing in the next two to seven days.
Weather researchers at Colorado State University recently revised their 2026 Atlantic hurricane season forecast to nine named storms, including four hurricanes and one major hurricane.
This is due, in large part, to expectations of a strong El Niño, “driving high levels of tropical Atlantic vertical wind shear” that tend to tear apart forming storms, according to the CSU report.
The height of hurricane season runs from mid-August into October. The season ends Nov. 30.