The National Hurricane Center is tracking a system in the eastern Caribbean that has a high likelihood of becoming a tropical storm in the coming days.
As of Monday afternoon, the system was a few hundred miles west of the Windward Islands off the northern coast of Venezuela. It is currently “robust, fast-moving tropical wave” traveling quickly westward at between 20 and 25 mph, according to the NHC.
It is expected to begin to slow down and gain strength as it heads over the central Caribbean by the middle of the week. Forecasters give the system an 80% chance of becoming a tropical depression within the next seven days.
Whether it evolves into a tropical storm or not, the system is expected to cause heavy rainfall, strong winds and rough seas for all areas in its path.
Though experts believe it is more likely than not that the system will develop into a tropical storm, which would be named Melissa, there is significant uncertainty about how strong it may become and what its path may be. According to the Weather Channel, the possible outcomes range from the storm making an abrupt northeastern turn and heading out into the Atlantic Ocean, continuing to track west across Central America, or shifting northward over Cuba and eventually the U.S. Gulf Coast.
So far, the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season has been relatively mild. There have been 12 named storms and four hurricanes, three of which developed into major hurricanes. All four of those hurricanes have followed similar tracks that have taken them away from the U.S. mainland. At this point in the 2024 season, the country had already been hit by two massively destructive storms, Helene and Milton, which devastated whole swaths of the southeastern U.S.
