A disturbance in the central Caribbean Sea could turn into a tropical depression as early as next week, the National Hurricane Center forecasts. Its five-day outlook has it on the same path as last month’s Hurricane Ian, which devastated the southwest Florida coast.
The current storm in the Caribbean has a greater than 60 percent chance of forming into a tropical cyclone the next five days. Its current path shows it potentially churning west and northwest toward the Gulf of Mexico.
“Environmental conditions are forecast to be conducive for gradual development over the next few days, and a tropical depression is likely to form by early next week while the disturbance moves west-northwestward at 10 to 15 mph over the central Caribbean Sea,” the National Hurricane Center stated in its 2 p.m. advisory Saturday.
An Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft is in the area of the disturbance to investigate the system.
“Regardless of development, locally heavy rainfall is possible over portions of the Lesser Antilles, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico through this weekend,” NHC stated.
There’s another storm in the western Atlantic Ocean that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is tracking. It’s currently about 100 miles east of Bermuda and has a low percentage of developing into a tropical cyclone.
Once a defined tropical system reaches 35 mph, it becomes a tropical storm. It becomes a Category 1 storm when it hits a minimum of 74 mph sustained winds.
Although tropical systems in the Atlantic season have seen a rather dormant season, this storm comes on the heels of Hurricanes Ian and Julia within the last month. Ian crushed Florida on September 28 as a high-level Category 4 storm. It leveled many structures on the barrier islands from Naples to Sarasota, with winds clocking more than 150 mph in some places.
Ian left more than 100 people dead, hundreds injured and hundreds of thousands displaced and without power or running water for at least more than a week.
Ian traversed northeast across Florida, wreaking havoc in Orlando and up through Jacksonville. Ian downgraded into a tropical storm but regained Category 1 strength before it made landfall again in South Carolina.
Julia took a somewhat similar path as Ian’s. Both storms began in the Atlantic, about 10-12 degrees north of the equator. Ian took a northward turn once it got into the Caribbean but Julia stayed on a westward path. Julia continued to a landfall as a Category 1 storm in Nicaragua on October 8.
Hurricane season, which begins annually on May 1, officially ends on November 30. There are no other tropical systems in the Atlantic or Pacific basins at the time, according to the hurricane center.
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