The system that yesterday was little more than a mass of thunderstorms has grown stronger on the energy-filled, hot water of the Caribbean and is now Tropical Storm Karl.

The good news is that it is expected to pose absolutely no threat to Acadiana, as a high pressure system anchored overhead will steer it away from us, and because Karl formed so late that it will almost immediately run into land and weaken.

Joe Rua of the Lake Charles office of the National Weather Service predicts the ridge will strengthen accross the southern U.S. and northern Gulf of Mexico and that “this will help keep Carkl well to the south of Acadiana as it tracks across the Bay of Campeche on Thursday and Friday and into the mid-Mexico coast Friday night.”

He expects the main moisture with this system to stay well to the south with only a few stray showers reaching south Louisiana.

Karl breaks a pattern that so far this season has been generally one where many of the storms forming near the African coast have turned north into the Atlantic. Hurricanes Igor, which poses a distinct threat to Bermuda, and Julia are perfect examples of this tendency.

While this type of pattern is nice for people living on the Gulf Coast, weak systems that are less susceptible to influences off to the north will still drift into the Caribbean, where they find a rich environment for intensification. This is what happened with the disturbance that was yesterday labeled 92L and today is Karl.

Early this morning, Karl had maximum sustained winds of about 65 mph and was located about 100 miles east of Chetumal, Mexico. Mexico's government issued a tropical storm warning for the peninsula from Chetumal northward to Cabo Catoche. Parts of Belize are under a tropical storm watch.

The storm was expected to smack into land near Tulum, a beach town of eco-resorts and cliffside Mayan ruins, and then quickly weaken into a tropical depression before heading back out over the Gulf of Mexico, where it could turn into a hurricane by the end of the week.

Meahwhile, Hurricane Julia strengthened far out in the open Atlantic, with its maximum sustained winds increasing to near 135 mph. Also far from land over the Atlantic, Hurricane Igor's top winds weakened slightly to 145 mph.