There’s now a third tropical wave in the Atlantic. How will this affect Florida’s weather?
There are now three potential tropical storms developing in the Atlantic, and one of them could bring heavy rain to South Florida by the weekend.
Update: Here’s when Florida will start to feel the heavy rain and winds.
The newest tropical wave, Disturbance 3, is between the west coast of Africa and the Cabo Verde Islands, as of the National Hurricane Center’s 8 a.m. Wednesday.
That wave is expected to move quickly westward in the next few days, but, unlike its speed, forecasters say its development will be “slow” — zero percent in the next 48 hours and 20 percent over the weekend into early next week — as it moves over the Atlantic.
It also appears to be following the track of another tropical wave, Disturbance 2, which was about 900 miles east of the Lesser Antilles Tuesday morning.
This doesn’t mean the waves are going to intersect or interact.
Both of them are moving westward, but by the time Disturbance 3 nears the Lesser Antilles, the other wave will have slowly moved on, according to forecasters.
Disturbance 2’s chance of developing into a tropical cyclone in the next 48 hours or five days has also decreased to 10 percent, according to Wednesday’s forecast. On Tuesday, it had a 30 percent chance of development.
The one closest to South Florida, Disturbance 1, is near the southeastern Bahamas and is expected to move west-northwestward across Florida’s peninsula and over the eastern Gulf of Mexico in the next few days.
It has a low 20 percent chance of development, but those chances spike up to 60 percent over the weekend, with the possibility of a tropical depression forming as the system moves across Florida and over the eastern Gulf of Mexico, as of Wednesday.
Regardless of development, forecasters expect it to bring locally heavy rainfall across the Bahamas through Thursday and across Florida on Friday into the weekend, according to the National Hurricane Center.
This story was originally published September 10, 2019 at 7:33 AM.
