Those who watch the tropics closely have been pinging me to ask about a possible hurricane striking the coast in about 10 to 12 days time.

That’s because one of the major global forecast models, the GFS, has been advertising this possibility for a couple of days. The latest forecast run, for example, brings a rather large system to the Texas coast on June 23.

I’m generally skeptical about such strong storms this early in the season, and regard models after seven to 10 days to have very little basis in reality. But what about this storm?

For some insight I turned to Chris Hebert, a tropics expert at ImpactWeather. Here are his thoughts:

I’d take that with a grain of salt. For the past week, the GFS, along with the European and Canadian models, has been hinting at possible tropical development in the western Caribbean and/or southern Gulf of Mexico between June 17 and 22. The long-range GFS has also been predicting the movement of an MJO pulse into the East Pacific by next weekend. The linked map indicates increased lifting resulting in increased thunderstorm activity into the NW Caribbean by next weekend. The Wheeler diagram also indicates a moderate MJO in the longer range: The bottom line is that all available model guidance has been at least hinting at possible development in the western Caribbean and/or the southern Gulf of Mexico between next Sunday through next Friday. Currently, thunderstorm activity in the region remains minimal. There are no disturbances to focus on. However, the models actually did predict “something” developing either in the western Caribbean or off the East U.S. Coast about 10-14 days before Beryl developed. They obviously are picking up on something, so I think that the best course of action is to keep an eye on the western Caribbean over the next week to see if there is any increase in thunderstorm activity. If thunderstorms do blossom in the region, then there might be some chance of development.

So this is something to watch as we get deeper into June, but far from a likelihood.