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Here’s why Central Florida’s eyes should stay fixed on the tropics

This is everything you need to know

ORLANDO, Fla. – While the two areas of interest currently highlighted by National Hurricane Center likely won’t influence our weather in Central Florida at all, we’re keeping CLOSE tabs on one that has the potential to down the road.

It’s still very early in the running, but our next tropical wave expected to splash down off the coast of Africa in the next 12 hours has some of the best and most confident model support of the season so far.

[RELATED: What we’re watching in the tropics, why it’s important. Everything to know]

Multiple tropical waves continue to move off Africa into open water. The few upcoming clusters have a higher chance of developing further as opposed to those being eaten up by the dry air now. (Copyright 2025 by WKMG ClickOrlando - All rights reserved.)

The NHC has yet to highlight this next entity, but I do have a feeling it’s coming sooner than we think. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see another fateful yellow blob appear on their homepage before the end of the day Friday.

What makes this wave different is the current steering we have not only across the Atlantic but especially over the eastern U.S. If you’ve caught a few of my earlier articles in the year, I’d mentioned the dominant high pressure ridge bringing us tons of hot weather the last couple months could also carry a nasty surprise in the tropics...

That’s one of the possible end solutions here.

We have plenty of time to watch what could become our next named storm as it moves generally westward through the tropical Atlantic. A lot hinges on what the invest out ahead of it decides to do over the next three to five days.

When you look at the breakdown of our pattern across the Atlantic ocean, we generally see easterly winds moving through the tropics that coax our tropical waves westward. This should result in this potential system to continue towards the Lesser Antilles before maybe we see some diverging or lifting towards the north. (Copyright 2025 by WKMG ClickOrlando - All rights reserved.)

Invest 96L is losing the chance to develop into something stronger.

If it does miss that opportunity, it opens up a pathway for the next disturbance to organize and travel further west becoming a possible concern for the Caribbean islands to our southeast, the Bahamas and maybe even our east coast.

We’ve got about another 7-10 days ahead to really dial in what you all need to know to make the right decisions at home before anything tries to make a run at us from the tropics. Right now, all we can do is watch and wait. This also gives you your last shot at really making sure you have a plan ready to rock if the time comes.

This is a beautiful graphic that illustrates the time we have ahead of us when tracking a feature that comes off Africa. While time has been racing along, it's important to note we have a total of 7-10 days before anything gets close to Florida and we know a lot can change between then and now. (Copyright 2025 by WKMG ClickOrlando - All rights reserved.)

Even if nothing comes of this particular scenario, it’s a blatant heads up that the peak of the hurricane season is nearly here.

To read more of the tropics breakdown and what to pay attention to, click here.