(National Weather Service Lake Charles)

An area of low pressure is forecast to move across Florida and into the northeastern Gulf of Mexico late Tuesday or Wednesday morning.

National Weather Service Lake Charles meteorologist Donald Jones said conditions currently appear favorable enough to support some gradual development of this system as it moves westward.

Jones said there is a 30 percent chance the disturbance could intensify into a tropical storm in the Gulf later this week.

“The biggest risk for our area at this time will be the potential for heavy rainfall and flash flooding,” Jones said. “We’ve had a lot of damage and deaths before with weak tropical storms that bring in heavy rainfall.”

Right now the storm isn’t thriving, it’s being pushed, Jones said, by what is known as a “Bermuda high” — an area of high pressure located over Bermuda in the summer and fall that steers many storm systems westward across the Atlantic.

The further away the system stays from the coast, the more opportunity it will have to develop. If it hits the coast too fast from this “Bermuda high” push — and interacts with more land than water — it won’t.

He said sea surface temperatures — right now in the mid-to-upper 80s across the majority of the Gulf — are favorable for development as is the low wind sheer the Gulf is experiencing.

“If we’re going to deal with anything from this storm, it’s going to be water. The sloppier the storm, the more those rainfall numbers add up,” he said. “If this storm gets its act together any more, I expect this risk to rise. We are not at this point, expecting a major hurricane.”

Right now, the rain chances are expected to hit Southwest Louisiana on Friday.