At a Glance

We're watching two areas for potential tropical development.An area of low pressure located southeast of Bermuda is likely to become Epsilon.Another area of disturbed weather in the western Caribbean is also being tracked.

Another named storm is expected to form in the Atlantic this week as the frenetic 2020 hurricane season continues its record storm pace.

The National Hurricane Center is monitoring two areas for the possible formation of a new tropical or subtropical depression or storm. A low-pressure system located to the southeast of Bermuda has the greatest chance of developing through midweek, but there's also another area being watched in the western Caribbean.

Epsilon will be the name given to the Atlantic's next named storm.

Southeast of Bermuda

An area of low pressure located about 700 miles east-southeast of Bermuda is likely to become a tropical or subtropical depression or storm by midweek.

The National Hurricane Center is referring to this low as Invest 94L. Short for "investigation", this naming convention is used by NHC to identify features they are monitoring for development, allowing for the collection of specialized datasets and running of special computer forecast models on the disturbance.

(MORE: What is a Subtropical Storm?)

With blocking high pressure aloft to its north, this system won't be able to simply take off immediately into the open North Atlantic, but instead will be steered northwestward.

That track may allow this system to move near Bermuda by late in the week ahead. Impacts on the archipelago remain uncertain, but bands of rain and gusty winds are possible.

For now, this system isn't a threat to the U.S. East Coast.

However, the pressure difference between strong high pressure over the North Atlantic Ocean and this disturbance should eventually generate swells that will push toward parts of the East Coast, leading to high surf and rip currents later this week. This rough surf should also extend to the Bahamas, and north-facing coasts of Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the Leeward Islands.

Parts of the U.S. East Coast are already seeing coastal flooding and rip currents early this week. That is being caused by a combination of king tides and onshore winds from an area of high pressure.

Western Caribbean Sea

The other area we're watching is in the western Caribbean Sea.

A broad area of low pressure may develop this week east of central America and south of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.

While some ocean heat content was churned up by Tropical Storm Gamma and Hurricane Delta, the Caribbean Sea is still plenty warm enough to support tropical development.

If the broader low-pressure system can tighten up into a more defined circulation with colocated thunderstorm activity, then a tropical depression could form sometime later this week in this area. Beyond that, the strength or final track of this potential system remains highly uncertain.

This area of low pressure could enhance rainfall across the western Caribbean region this week. It's too soon to know if this potential system will affect any other land areas in the long-term future.

(MORE: Hurricane Season is Far From Over)

Typical Areas For Late-Season Development

These two potential systems are both in areas that have seen development before this late in the hurricane season, from the central Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean Sea.

In the map below, you can see the general motion of several of these tracks is northeast once they gain enough latitude and are accelerated by the jet stream coming off the continental United States into the North Atlantic Ocean.

Tracks of Atlantic Basin storms that formed after Oct. 13 from 2000-2019. Segments in black indicate when each storm was a tropical wave, low, or remnant.

(Data: NOAA, NHC)

We've already blown through 25 storms this season, requiring the use of the Greek alphabet for additional named storms for only the second time.

If both of these systems become named storms, they would be named "Epsilon" and "Zeta", the fifth and sixth letters of the Greek alphabet.

The also used up the first six letters of the Greek alphabet, but it took until the end of December for "Zeta" to form that year.

One unnamed subtropical storm was found in post-analysis of the 2005 season, thus bringing that season's record total to 28 storms.

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