Two months away from the end of the 2019

Atlantic hurricane season and the Caribbean basin has gotten some reprieve as

the region experiences a lull in activity.

As at Tuesday, October 1, only two major disturbances

were observed in the Caribbean Sea by the National Hurricane Centre in Florida.

The first, located just west of Jamaica, is

a broad area of low pressure located over the northwest Caribbean. The system

is producing an area of disorganised cloudiness and thunderstorms.

Development, if any, is expected to be slow

as the system crawls west-northwest near the Yucatan peninsula in a couple of

days, and across the southern Gulf of Mexico by Friday.

The second system is a band of disorganised

cloudiness and showers extending from the southeast Bahamas and stretching northeast

over the western Atlantic for several hundred miles.

The disturbance, associated with a surface

trough, is not expected to develop while it moves to the northeast at 5 to 10

mph, well south and east of Bermuda.

2019 setting records of its own

It has been an active hurricane season so

far, with Dorian and Lorenzo heralding 2019 as the fourth consecutive season to

feature at least one Category 5 hurricane (Matthew in 2016; Irma and Maria in

2017 and Michael in 2018).

The season’s first hurricane, Barry, formed

in mid-July in the northern Gulf of Mexico and struck Louisiana.

After 5 weeks without tropical cyclones,

activity began to ramp up in late August with a few storms developing,

including Hurricane Dorian, the second hurricane and first major hurricane of

the season.

Activity increased further in September

when Hurricane Humberto formed and later brought hurricane-force winds to

Bermuda, followed by Tropical Storm Imelda, which quickly formed over the Gulf

of Mexico before it made landfall in Texas, causing catastrophic flooding.

Meanwhile, Lorenzo became the easternmost

Category 5 Atlantic hurricane on record, still barrelling towards the Azores.