Forecasters tracking potential storm in the Atlantic. It could approach Florida
The National Hurricane Center is eyeing a tropical wave in the mid-Atlantic that has the potential to strengthen into a tropical storm this week — and potentially affect Florida.
As of Tuesday night, the disturbance still has a 60% chance of forming into a depression over the next seven days, the hurricane center said. Forecasters gave it zero shot at strengthening in the next two days.
But forecasters said the nascent system would find friendlier conditions in the next two days and could see some development then, while the system is near Puerto Rico, Haiti and the Bahamas.
Because the system is young and not well organized, global computer models are not designed to track its potential path as well as they can track fully formed tropical storms and hurricanes with defined eyes. Despite that, early runs of those models appear to show the system nearing Florida and the Bahamas over the weekend.
The National Weather Service’s Miami office predicts a 50% chance of rain for this Saturday and Sunday.
“Keep monitoring daily updates because no one should ever say in a situation like this “we’re good, no need to check it anymore”,” wrote Craig Setzer, chief meteorologist for Royal Caribbean Group, on X.
This story was originally published July 30, 2024 at 8:16 AM.
