The National Hurricane Center is keeping its eye on three tropical systems in the Atlantic, and one of them has the potential of getting into the Gulf of Mexico.
Advertisement
As for the other systems in the Atlantic, Tropical Storm Gaston is gaining strength, but that’s not a much of concern, because the current forecast is for it to turn north, thousands of miles away from the USA shore. The depression, expected to become a remnant low in the next few days, was centered about 455 miles south of Bermuda and was moving west-northwest near 13 mph. Seven-day tropical computer models at this time have the system tracking to the west-northwest, and eventually curving out into the open water, away from the continental United States.
A Hurricane Hunter plane flew into the system Tuesday to get a better idea of what’s happening, but found it was still disorganized.
By Sunday, the system could bring deteriorating weather and sea conditions to the east coast of Florida, AccuWeather said. The next Atlantic tropical cyclone will be named Hermine. The system has a medium (40%) chance of formation in 2 days and a medium (60%) chance in 5 days.
The system then could rapidly intensify into a large, potentially risky major hurricane that would target the Southeast U.S. coast Sunday or Monday, Weather Underground meteorologist Jeff Masters said.
The storm’s maximum sustained winds had increased Tuesday to 65 miles per hour (100 kph). Invest 99 L may become a tropical storm by tomorrow (Figure 1).
“This storm has the potential to be a risky one for the Bahamas and the Southeast United States”, Masters wrote in his blog Tuesday.
Advertisement
In two days, Gaston is forecast to enter an area of drier air and wind shear that is expected to halt the storm’s development or even weaken the storm.
