Tropical Storm coming to North Carolina next week?

It's August ... and that's when our tropical season starts to heat up. We are watching two systems right now. I've highlighted them:

Let's talk about the two systems that could affect the U.S.

The left one is the remnant of Tropical Storm Harvey. It has a 90 percent chance becoming a tropical storm over the next couple of days. It's path would take it into the U.S. as a low pressure system that brings lots of rain to the western U.S. by Monday.

There's still plenty of uncertainty as to its exact track.

Speaking of uncertainty (and the reason I'm writing about this again today) is the system that has a 40 percent chance of becoming our next Tropical Storm (that would be named Irma).

The Canadian model has been extremely consistent in the past couple of days with its strength and timing of the storm.

If we were just to look at that, we might think "uh-oh, bad news for the Outer Banks next week!" But one model does not a forecast make. So let's look at the American version.

It also shows a Low off the coast next Tuesday, though further out to sea. In today's run of the model, it shows a little more organization in the low pressure system. It could still be a hurricane, but notice the pressure isn't as low and the isobars aren't nearly as packed. That means the winds would not be as bad.

If we look at the spaghetti plot for this system, it really could go anywhere in the western Atlantic at this point. Notice the Canadian model is the ONLY one that brings it up the coast. Many models take it west across Florida and keep it away from us.

So what does all of this mean for you? It's kind of like a snowfall forecast. We are watching the systems to see how they develop and we're waiting. I'm not willing to make a prediction about a hurricane at this time, but next week could be interesting in the western Atlantic Ocean. As a matter of fact, the next month could be interesting. After all, it IS hurricane season...