There's an 80 Percent Chance a Tropical Depression Forms Off Florida by Memorial Day

There's already plenty of depression to go around in South Florida before this Memorial Day. Traffic is gonna be a ludicrous nightmare thanks to Miami Beach's totally not-race-related crackdown on Urban Beach Week. The Marlins belong in the trash can, and the Dolphins will probably be even worse. And now, a tropical depression might just roll over the peninsula for the holiday weekend. 

The National Hurricane Center this morning upgraded the chances of a broad swath of storms off Central America morphing into a full-blown depression by this weekend all the way up to 80 percent. For now, the storm is too large and ungainly to accurately predict where it's heading, but South Florida could get some massive rainfall.

"Regardless of development, the counter-clockwise flow of air around this low-pressure system in combination with a very wet tropical airmass will funnel large amounts of tropical moisture over Cuba and the Southeast U.S., resulting in very heavy rains during the coming week," Jeff Masters at the Weather Underground writes.

The storm is still a "broad, stationary surface low-pressure system" just off the Yucatán, the National Hurricane Center says. But "gradual development of this system is expected during the next couple of days as it drifts northward" and gets better organized over the warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico.
"Environmental conditions are forecast to become more conducive for development through early next week, and a subtropical or tropical depression is likely to form by late Saturday over the southeastern Gulf of Mexico," the National Hurricane Center warns in its 8 a.m. forecast update.

For now, it seems unlikely the system will become anything stronger than an annoying tropical storm or depression. But South Florida is already flirting with record rainfall totals for May, and if the system brings another long period of deluges to the area, flooding could get serious.

Hurricane season doesn't officially start for another seven days. This summer is going to be great.