It’s been a minute since we’ve needed to take a critical look at the Atlantic here on this site, but that does not mean things have not been busy. Undoubtedly, if you’ve been following the Atlantic season via the National Hurricane Center or other outlets, you are aware of just how active this hurricane season has continued to be. Let’s recap:

• Hurricane Laura making landfall just shy of Category 5 status on Lake Charles, Louisiana, causing significant damage;
• Hurricane Marco, which was fortunately not the initial punch ahead of Laura that forecasters had feared;
• Hurricane Nana, which made landfall in Belize, causing very heavy rainfall, flash flooding, and mudslides;
• Tropical Storm Omar, which spent several days battling wind shear as it meandered harmly out to sea before dissipating

Now, we have Tropical Storm Paulette and Tropical Storm Rene far out in the Atlantic, in addition to two areas being monitored for potential development over the next five days. One of these areas is well off of Africa, but the other is somewhat close to home. We’ll talk about that in a sec.