The National Hurricane Center currently has a 60 percent chance that the low will become a subtropical or tropical cyclone over the central or eastern Gulf over the next 5 days.
In general, for the Mississippi and Alabama Gulf Coast, we can expect scattered to numerous showers and thunderstorms to continue, especially during the afternoon and evening hours over land areas with some scattered convection over the nearshore coastal waters during the overnight hours through Friday.
Now the Forecast for the weekend and into early next week. It will depend almost entirely on the timing and movement of the anticipated Gulf low-pressure system.
Should this system materialize as anticipated, a movement to the north-central or northeast Gulf coast looks most likely. The current ECMWF model run is a little slower in the development and the movement north of the system than previous runs but continues to move the low to the north central/northeast Gulf coast in the late Saturday into Sunday night timeframe.
The GFS model, however, continues to be slower with development and more toward the west coast of Florida through Sunday night. Both the ECMWF and GFS linger the low inland over the southeast US through Tuesday, but in different locations, with the ECMWF over the lower Mississippi River area while the GFS is further east over Georgia and Alabama.
Both scenarios would support numerous showers and storms through the Memorial Day Weekend period with the potential for locally heavy rainfall and possible flash flooding over portions of the Gulf Coast.
Will continue with the trend of higher rainfall amounts closer to the coast, where latest WPC guidance indicates 3 to 5 inches of rainfall with locally higher amounts will be possible through Tuesday.
The potential for high surf, minor coastal flooding, and even a slight potential for tornadic storms can’t be ruled out in the long surface low moves move toward the Gulf Coast, but it is simply too far in advance with the uncertainties to give any specifics on this.
We will continue to monitor this developing situation.
