Off-season storm? Watching a disturbance in the subtropics

Wait, wait! There might be more! Hurricane season has officially ended, at least on the calendar, but there is one more storm that could have a few surprises up its sleeve.

There is a 50 percent chance for a system located about 800 miles northeast of the Lesser Antilles to develop into a subtropical or tropical system. The window of development is very short as the disturbance is moving northward and will enter cooler waters by the end of the week.

On Tuesday, the disturbance looks very messy, with most of its convection shifted to the north and east. If the system does not develop into a tropical or subtropical system, then it will interact with a trough in the middle levels of the atmosphere, and this will inhibit it from becoming a named system.

Models show that this system will eventually move northward and be located near Greenland approaching the Arctic Circle by early next week.

The tropics have produced December storms in the past. It does not happen every year, but they do happen. In fact, December is the month with the most off-season storms after May, with 28 storms recorded since the late 1800s. For reference, the month of May has 52 storms recorded. Hurricane season officially starts on June first and ends on November 30.