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Forecasters Watching Early Season 'Disturbance' In Atlantic

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MIAMI (CBSMiami) -- An area of disorganized thunderstorms continues in the southwest Atlantic to the east of the Bahamas and is slowly drifting toward Florida.

This area has some potential to become better organized over the next two days before conditions become less favorable for development by later in the weekend.

At this time, it appears the main threat to Florida and the Bahamas would be rainfall, regardless of whether it becomes a depression or weak (sub)tropical storm.

"Early season disturbances are common and are sometimes a mix of tropical and non-tropical (extratropical) characteristics.  When this blend of two systems occurs, we call those 'subtropical'," according to CBS4 Chief Meteorologist Craig Setzer.

"There is a bit of a swirl to it," said Setzer. "This swirl is all part of a bigger, large upper-level low pressure system, and typically in the tropics, large upper-level low pressure systems develop very, very slowly -- if they turn into a tropical system -- and in this case, we've got kind of an unbalanced low too. Dry air on one side, tropical moisture on the other side, so it's really not that organized and conditions are not really favorable for development of that thunderstorm activity down there. Besides that, there's a big dip in the jet stream working its way along that's gonna kind wipe that system out as well."

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