As we get deeper into August, it appears the tropics are finally waking up.

The National Hurricane Center has raised the likelihood of an area of low pressure north of South America in the Atlantic becoming a tropical storm to 40 percent over the next five days.

This low pressure system has developed as part of an increasingly active African wave train, which characteristically heats up in August. There are other factors increasingly favorable for development, such as a trend toward rising air across the tropical Atlantic where storms form.

The models have been on to this system for several days, and what's intriguing is that it has a chance to enter the Gulf of Mexico in about a week or so.

An early morning run of the GFS model on Tuesday brought the system to Galveston in about 10 days time, but the latest run brings it inland closer to New Orleans.

Ignore both of these possibilities for now because models more than five to seven days out are unreliable, and we're talking about a system that isn't remotely close to having a closed circulation.

This is a system worth watching, however, especially because it's August.

But it's also notable because this might signal the beginning of the Cape Verde hurricane season, when storms develop in the tropical Atlantic from easterly waves coming off of Africa.

Some stats:

n 60 percent of all tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic basin form from easterly waves.

n 85 percent of all major hurricanes in the Atlantic basin originate from easterly waves.

The waves are typically pushed westward around a subtropical high pressure system, and often whether they track all the way toward the United States is determined by the strength of this high.

At this time the high is strong enough such that this system highlighted by the National Hurricane Center should make it into the Caribbean Sea. And thereafter? Who knows, but we can't rule out the Gulf.