The now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t weather system that was formerly known as Tropical Storm Gaston was still struggling to revive itself Monday as it approached the northern Leeward Islands.

Gaston dissipated from a tropical storm to an area of low pressure Friday after encountering dry air. It maintained a well-defined centre of circulation, but lost most of its organised thunderstorm activity. Although it was still surrounded by dry air Monday, ex-Gaston was heading into a moister environment in the Eastern Caribbean, where wind shear is also very light.

The weather system, which Accuweather was calling a ‘tropical rain storm’ Monday, had winds of 30 miles per hour with tropical-storm-force gusts up to 40 miles per hour.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said there was a high chance - 70 per cent - of Gaston becoming a tropical cyclone again by 1pm Wednesday.

Should Gaston resurrect, its future threat to the Cayman Islands would depend on the track it takes. The longer it takes to reorganise, the better the chance that it will remain on a westerly track that could impact the Cayman Islands. Computer model guidance on Gaston was split, with some forecast tracks taking the storm northwest to a likely end in the mountains of Hispaniola, while other models had the storm travelling a more southerly course, hitting or skirting just south of Jamaica late this week. If the storm were to impact the Cayman Islands, it would mostly likely do so next weekend - the six-year anniversary of Hurricane Ivan’s visit here.

Elsewhere in the Atlantic basin, the eighth named storm of the hurricane season, Tropical Storm Hermine, was heading for an early Tuesday landfall around the Texas/Mexico border.

In addition, there were numerous computer models showing development of another tropical wave moving off of Africa, forecasting the genesis of Tropical Storm Igor later this week.