The Hurricane Center started advisories on Potential Tropical Cyclone Five in the northern Gulf on Monday morning, with a Tropical Storm Warning up for the upper Texas and southwestern Louisiana coast and nothing at all posted for Florida

The National Hurricane Center began issuing advisories at 10 o'clock Monday morning Central time on Potential Tropical Cyclone Five, the disturbance it had been carrying as AL97 over the northern Gulf. There is no watch and no warning for any part of Florida.

The warning that was issued runs along the northwestern Gulf coast, from Port Bolivar, Texas, to the Vermilion and Cameron Parish line in Louisiana. That is a Tropical Storm Warning, meaning tropical storm conditions are expected somewhere inside it within 24 to 36 hours. It is the only watch or warning the advisory lists anywhere.

At the time of the advisory the system was near 27.8 north, 91.0 west, roughly 130 miles south of Morgan City, Louisiana, with maximum sustained winds of 35 miles an hour and a central pressure of 1013 millibars, drifting west-northwest at 5 miles an hour. The Hurricane Center puts the chance of it becoming a tropical cyclone at 80 per cent and expects it to be a tropical storm by tonight.

The forecast track moves it away from Florida, not toward it. Every position in the published forecast is further west than the last: near 91.8 west tonight, 93.2 west by Tuesday morning at a forecast peak of about 45 miles an hour, onshore over Texas by Tuesday evening, post-tropical and inland near 95.5 west by Wednesday morning, and dissipated by Wednesday night.

The hazards the Hurricane Center describes are all on that coast. Storm surge of 1 to 3 feet from High Island, Texas, to the Vermilion and Iberia Parish line in Louisiana. Rain of 3 to 6 inches, with as much as 9 inches in places, across parts of the upper Texas coast and inland through east-central Texas, and 2 to 3 inches in southwest Louisiana, with flash flooding likely, particularly in urban areas.

Two things in the Hurricane Center's own discussion are worth carrying rather than smoothing over. The first is that the system is not well put together: overnight scatterometer data showed the circulation lacking definition on its western side, and surface observations and Hurricane Hunters data have the centre still elongated and ill defined. Forecaster Reinhart describes the 30 knot starting intensity as possibly generous. The second is the other side of the same coin. The system is sitting over water warmer than 30 degrees Celsius with weak wind shear, and a small storm in those conditions can change intensity quickly, so the discussion says strengthening beyond the published forecast cannot be ruled out. The track is the confident part of this forecast. The intensity is not.

For anyone here who read this desk's earlier item on the Collier and Sarasota county firefighters working the Ross Fire in Texas, the two are not connected. The rain the Hurricane Center forecasts falls on the upper Texas coast and inland through east-central Texas. The fire is burning in Palo Pinto County in north-central Texas, west of Fort Worth, outside the area the advisory describes, and the furthest west the forecast track reaches is 95.5 west, well east of it.

The next intermediate advisory was set for 1 o'clock Central and the next full advisory for 4 o'clock Central.