The eastern Pacific has a storm coming and no storm yet. The National Hurricane Center's tropical weather outlook puts the formation chance for an area of low pressure well west-southwest of Baja California at 90 percent through both 48 hours and seven days, with a tropical depression expected within a day or two. [1] What it does not have is an advisory.

The paper reported on June 28 that the hurricane outlook ruled out an Atlantic storm for seven days while the Pacific held at 90 percent. A day on, the split is unchanged, and it sharpens the distinction the feed keeps collapsing — between a probability printed on an outlook and a cyclone that carries a number. [1]

The advisory is the moment the record changes. The center opens a tropical cyclone advisory package only when a system reaches at least tropical-depression strength, or when a disturbance threatens land within 72 hours as a "potential tropical cyclone." [2] Before that threshold, there is a percentage; after it, there is a storm with parameters.

The centerpiece is the Public Advisory, issued for eastern Pacific systems every six hours at 2 and 8, morning and evening, Pacific time. [2] Its top is a fixed table a computer can parse — latitude and longitude, maximum sustained wind, direction and speed of motion, minimum central pressure — followed by current watches and warnings, a discussion of track and intensity, a hazards section for surge, wind, rain, and tornadoes, and the time of the next issuance. [2] Alongside it run the Forecast Advisory, the Forecast Discussion, the Wind Speed Probabilities, and the forecast cone the center posts for every active system. [2][3]

That is the gap. X reads a swirl of thunderstorms off Mexico as a monster the government is slow to admit; forecast coverage repeats the 90 percent and moves on. [1] Neither is the checkable thing. Until the low earns a depression's number and an advisory's table, it is a chance, not a storm — and when it qualifies, the wind speed and the cone will say so in a product stamped with a time. [2][3]

-- LUCIA VEGA, São Paulo