A brewing weather feature known as a "gyre" near Central America has caught the attention of some hurricane forecasters who say the system could spawn the first storm of the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season.
AccuWeather forecasters sounded the early warning on May 6, but so far meteorologists from the National Hurricane Center have not issued any advisories about the potential system.
"We're starting to get into that time of year where we need to keep an eye on the Caribbean," AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva said May 6. "At the very least, a wetter pattern down across Central America and then up into the Western Caribbean is expected."
Hurricane season officially starts June 1, but storms can and do form before that date.
A large, slow-spinning area in the atmosphere could develop somewhere around Central America, overlapping with part of the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean around the middle of May, AccuWeather said. This phenomenon, known as the Central American Gyre, can "sometimes lay the groundwork for a tropical depression or tropical storm formation."
According to the Weather Underground, Central American Gyres tend to develop on either end of the Atlantic hurricane season, as large-scale weather features rearrange themselves during the waxing and waning of northern summer.
"They also tend to have relatively weak surface winds, but they can sprawl over hundreds of miles, and they are notoriously long-lasting and slow-moving, both of which make them dangerous rain producers," noted Weather Underground meteorologist Bob Henson in 2020.
He added, "as smaller-scale vortexes spin around the gyre, there's always the chance that one or more will consolidate into a tropical cyclone and eventually break away from the gyre."
AccuWeather said, "While the Central American gyre itself doesn't typically become a hurricane, it can provide the conditions for disturbances to develop into tropical depressions, storms, and even hurricanes."
"Right now, while we cannot rule it out, it does not look like a track to toward the U.S. is most likely," DaSilva said. Any risk would not be until at least May 20 and likely not until May 22."
"Given the pattern, I think the most likely is it would just cross over Jamaica, Cuba, and then head out to sea," DaSilva said.
If a tropical cyclone forms from the gyre, it would be named Andrea.
Outside of the traditional Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June through November, May is the most common month for tropical storms to develop, according to AccuWeather.
Tropical Storm Bertha was the most recent tropical storm to make landfall in the United States in May; it hit South Carolina in May 2020.
Since 2003, there have been 15 tropical cyclones that have formed before June 1. Eleven of those storms formed in May.