Great, the Weather System Soaking Miami Today Could Turn Into a Tropical Storm

If Miami is in a bad mood this morning, it’s understandable. This weekend was the rare two-day stretch of relentless gray clouds, driving rain, and flash floods with barely a second of sunshine. Now the city has woken up to a gloomy Monday of booming thunder and even more rain.

Don’t look to the forecast for hope. Though we’re still more than two weeks from the official start of hurricane season, the same system that’s been drenching South Florida since Friday now has a fighter’s chance of developing into a named tropical storm in the next few days.

The National Hurricane Center is watching the huge bank of storms, which stretches all the way from western Cuba through the Southeastern Gulf of Mexico, and gives the system a 40 percent shot of turning into a legit tropical storm by the end of the week.

“A large area of cloudiness, showers, and thunderstorms extending from western Cuba across the southeastern Gulf of Mexico, the Florida Straits, and much of the Florida Peninsula is associated with a broad surface low and trough interacting with an upper-level low,” the NHC says it its latest update. “This system could acquire some subtropical or tropical characteristics while it moves slowly northward across the eastern Gulf of Mexico during the next few days.”

The storm already dumped a prodigious amount of rain on South Florida over the weekend, setting a new one-day record for the date in Key West with nearly three-and-a-half inches and sparking tornado and flash-flood warnings across the region. South Beach, of course, flooded last night:

Weathermen on #hurricane watch on Florida Keys, flood warnings in place, this was the scene in #Miami Beach Collins Ave last night pic.twitter.com/qzwJ1Be1T8

— TravelMole (@TravelMole) May 14, 2018

Whether or not the system picks up enough steam to turn into Alberto, the first named system of 2018, it’ll make this week pretty awful in Miami.

“Regardless of subtropical or tropical cyclone formation, this system will enhance rainfall across portions of Florida and the northeastern Gulf Coast during the next few days,” the NHC says.

Hurricane season begins for real in 17 days.