It’s been a relatively quiet Atlantic hurricane season, but officials are watching a system forming off the coast of Africa that has a strong potential to become a named storm.

Environment Canada meteorologist Ian Hubbard says to-date storm-forming conditions haven’t been favourable, but they’re watching an area of unsettled weather in the eastern Atlantic that has the potential to become more organized, and grow.

“Conditions where these storms formed haven’t been very good for giving them the type of energy, and the things they need. There’s been a lot of vertical sheer and there hasn’t been nearly as much stability in the atmosphere. Where these tropical storms tend to form in thunderstorms, they just haven’t really been able to get going to the point where they get organized, eventually become a depression and then a tropical storm with a name,” says Hubbard.

“But we are seeing some of those conditions down there starting to change right now, and we’re actually looking at one area that has an 80 per cent chance of forming a tropical storm over the next week.”