Still, if the system maintains a core and decent structure during its time over land, there is plenty of warm water in the southern Gulf for it to reorganize and strengthen before it reaches Florida, if it heads that way. Seawater in the northern half of the Gulf is much cooler.

There is a strong consensus among the various computer forecast models that the tropical disturbance near Jamaica will organize into a tropical depression before the end of the week and pretty quickly develop into Tropical Storm Sara.

The National Hurricane Center said Wednesday it is tracking a system in the Caribbean that could soon strengthen into Hurricane Sara.