Tropical Depression 4 is passing over Western Cuba Saturday morning and is expected to become a tropical storm by tonight night as it moves into the Southeast Gulf of Mexico where conditions are favorable for strengthening.
TD 4 is expected to move along the western edge of high pressure located near Bermuda. A cold front and trough will pull it NW into the Southeastern Gulf of Mexico on Saturday. This will allow it to stay over the very warm water longer, giving this system time to strengthen into Tropical Storm Debby.
Model forecasts are in good agreement that it will track northeast toward The Big Bend of Florida by late Sunday or early Monday as a strong tropical storm or lower-end hurricane. For Central Alabama, we are not expecting any significant problems as the system will continue to move northeast next week.
Alabama will see large swells and a high Rip Current Risk, so stay out of the Gulf Waters this weekend. Since the track is forecast to be farther west, we could see some clouds late on Sunday move across Eastern Alabama.
Once inland, the system will turn NE and emerge off the GA/SC Coast where it will strengthen early next week. At this point there are model differences whether it continues moving NE or stalls and moves back west into GA/SC. If the second scenario occurs, then we could see some clouds and rain in Alabama during the middle to later part of next week.
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