The hurricane hunters are scheduled to fly into the system gathering steam over the Bahamas today to see what’s going on. NHC has this system at a 20% chance of development within the next 48 hours or 40% over the next 5 days.

Visible satellite view yesterday evening shows this system gaining some organisation as it feeds off unusually warm waters beneath.

Current rainbow imagery of the system this morning.

TOP IMAGE CREDIT: WeatherBug

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Just look at how warm compared to normal the waters are in it’s vicinity.

Very nice hi res view of the near 80F warm Gulf Stream that this system should encounter! Credit: Ocean Remote Sensing Group.

With the system gathering offshore, it’s looking a bit rough with heavy skies along Ormond Beach, FL this morning.

The GFS still has this thing strengthening into a fairly well organised tropical or subtropical entity prior to coming ashore in South Carolina later Friday.

The 10m wind gusts map shows a nice band of 30 to near 50 knot winds around a near calm center which suggests at least partial warm core.

Regardless of fully or part tropical, this thing will bring coastal gales or storm force wind, crashing waves, beach erosion and will be a big rain producer.

QPF prints out 2-4, locally 5 inches of rain in the next 7 days over the coastal Carolinas. Check out the bullseye of 7+ inches just offshore.

As for the rest of the country, well we’ve a ton of energy driving into the West Coast that may not just bring significant severe weather potential to the Plains but could bring severe weather to California with rare rainfall into SoCal. Something that shouldn’t really happen now that we’re well into May.

The Plains has seen some ridiculous rains in the past 1-2 days with close to 10 inches within 24-hours for parts of Texas.

Check out the upcoming 7 day totals off the QPF.

ECMWF 7-day snow forecast. Impressive for the time of year! Check out the Sierra…

GFS surface shows the mess crossing the country through the rest of this week and weekend.

See today’s video for the discussion.

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