The tropical depression is now about 170 miles west-southwest of Key West, Florida, and 125 miles west-northwest of Havana, Cuba. The system is expected to move toward the northeast later this week – toward the Florida Panhandle.
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Maximum sustained winds are near 85 miles per hour (140 km/h) with higher gusts. At this time, TD 9 is expected to get a tad stronger and become a tropical storm (either Hermine or Ian depending if TD 8 becomes a storm quicker).
The Weather on the 1s team is also watching two other tropical systems in the Atlantic Basin – Tropical Depression Nine and Hurricane Gaston.
On Sunday, Gaston had maximum sustained winds of 115mph and was located about 575 miles east of Bermuda, moving northwest at about 1mph. Because of this, a Tropical Storm Watch has been posted for the North Carolina coast from Cape Lookout up to Oregon Inlet.
The system could bring 3 to 5 inches of rain to South Florida and the Keys through Wednesday, the Hurricane Center said. It will likely bring heavy rains and high winds to the islands along North Carolina’s coast. At this point, the main threat would be some heavy rain, gusty winds, and rough surf along the Carolina coast. Isolated amounts of up to 7 inches are possible for coastal areas of southern Florida and the Keys.
The developing systems come as the season’s first major Atlantic hurricane, Gaston, was expected to remain a powerful storm for several days. This is due to wind shear blowing the storms in that direction.
An area of low pressure off the coast has now been classified as Tropical Depression 8. “Conditions are expected to be favorable for development of this system later this week while it moves westward at 15 to 20 miles per hour over the tropical eastern Atlantic”, forecasters warned Sunday.
The second storm, Tropical Depression 8, was moving toward the coast of North Carolina on Monday morning and had winds of 35 miles per hour. The storm is now less than 1,780 miles east of Hilo.
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The storm, which formed near Africa’s west coast earlier in August, briefly attained hurricane status some days later, before returning to tropical storm strength.
