On October 28, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) started watching the Southwestern Caribbean. There was an area that might become a tropical cyclone. At 12:00 UTC on October 29, the area of interest turned to two tropical waves coming together moving into the Eastern Caribbean, still supposed to enter the region. The disturbance steadily moved westward into a better environment for development. This allowed it to become better organized on October 31, but there was some question as to if it had formed a good circulation. However, by 21:00 UTC that day, satellite and microwave imagery said that a circulation had formed, and the NHC began issuing advisories on "Tropical Depression Twenty-Nine". At 03:00 UTC on November 1, the system intensified into "Tropical Storm Eta", becoming the earliest 28th non-extratropical storm on record in an Atlantic hurricane season, beating Tropical Storm Zeta in 2005.