The next storm that could threaten the United States was beginning to take shape Monday afternoon among a swirl of thunderstorms off the shores of Honduras in the western Caribbean Sea, with forecasters saying there is a strong likelihood that it becomes Helene, the next name in the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season storm list.

Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center are currently calling the area Potential Tropical Cyclone Nine and said this disturbed weather would form into a tropical storm — meaning the storm has winds of 39 miles per hour or higher wrapped around a common point — as it drifts north into the Gulf of Mexico. Many of the forecast models that meteorologists use show the storm strengthening rapidly over the next few days before hitting somewhere along the central to eastern Gulf of Mexico coastline Thursday.

This storm follows Francine, which spun across the western Gulf of Mexico this month. That storm struggled to organize and only slowly intensified into a weak Category 2 in the final few hours before making landfall in Louisiana and dropping a deluge of rainfall across New Orleans. If this storm system forms more quickly into a named storm across the Caribbean, it is more likely to become a hurricane or even a major hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico before it hits land.

Forecasters warned Monday afternoon that the system is expected to intensify into a major hurricane — meaning a Category 3 or higher, with wind speeds of at least 111 miles per hour — before it approaches the northeastern Gulf Coast on Thursday, but that it was too soon to pinpoint the exact location and magnitude of the potential storm’s impacts. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida pre-emptively issued a state of emergency on Monday, noting that parts of the state were still dealing with the effects of Hurricane Debby, which brought significant rain last month.

We’re in the early stages of the storm.

Heavy rain will spread across portions of Central America over the next 48 hours as this storm begins to take shape. As the storm passes between Cuba and Mexico it will unleash anywhere from four to eight inches of rain over western Cuba and the Cayman Islands with isolated totals around 12 inches and up to six inches over the Yucatán Peninsula.