KEEPING AN EYE ON THE TROPICS

It's still only a tropical depression for now, but the folks at the National Hurricane Centre are still looking for this to become Hurricane Wilma, and within five days to have maximum sustained winds of 95 knots --- that's 109.4 MPH --- which would bring the storm to a very high Catagory 2 level. 111 MPH would make it a Catagory 3 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

The steering currents are still weak, so there's a lot of uncertainity as to where what will likely become Wilma will head, but the centre line of the forecast track takes it over the western tip of Cuba by late Thursday/early Friday.

According to the discussion from the NHC site, mentioning a couple of the computer models used to help determine where the storm may go and what it may do:

THE RAPID INSTENSIFICATION COMPONENT OF THE SHIPS MODEL IS INCREASINGLY SUGGESTING THE LIKELIHOOD OF RAPID DEVELOPMENT...BUT A BETTER DEFINED INNER CORE STRUCTURE NEEDS TO FORM FIRST. THE GFDL MODEL BRINGS THE DEPRESSION TO MAJOR HURRICANE STATUS WITHIN THREE DAYS...AND THE LARGE SCALE FACTORS ARE CERTAINLY IN PLACE TO ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN.

I4J will continue watching the development of this storm.