First Hurricane Forming?

A visit to Dr. Jeff Masters' blog today showed a tropical wave forming off the coast of Africa. While it's early for storms to come out of this early, watch out east coast.

From Dr. Masters' blog:

A new area of concern has developed today off of the coast of Africa, 300 miles south-southwest of the Cape Verde Islands, at about 12N 25W. This large and well-organized tropical wave has developed a surface circulation, and is beginning to show some intense thunderstorms developing near its center. Wind shear is a marginal 10-20 knots over the wave, but is forecast to remain at this level or decrease some over the next two days. Sea surface temperatures are marginal for development, about 26-27 degrees C. There is some African dust to the wave's north, but not as much as we've been seeing in previous weeks. This wave could slowly organize into a tropical depression in the next day or two as it moves west-northwest at 15-20 mph. It's too early to speculate what the long-term track of this system might be. NHC is not impressed with this wave; they have not mentioned it in their 5:30 pm tropical outlook. No doubt the marginal SSTs and moderate wind shear--plus the fact that systems in this vicinity generally do not start developing until early August--are giving them a wait-and-see attitude.

And this impressive satellite view:

It could be an early visit to the coast. Lenslinger, get your rain gear before you come back from vacation.