Tropical Depression 9 is in the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to strengthen soon, the National Hurricane Center said Tuesday morning (Aug. 30).
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As of 5 p.m. Monday, the first depression was located about 140 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras with top sustained winds of 35 mph and moving to the northwest. The system, located 200 miles west-northwest of Havana, Cuba, carried maximum sustained winds of 35 mph, it said.
Rainfall: The depression is expected to produce additional rain accumulations of 2 to 4 inches over western Cuba through Wednesday, with maximum storm total amounts up to 12 inches.
Maximum sustained winds are near 35 miles per hour (55 km/h) with higher gusts.
Tropical Depression #8 will graze the North Carolina Outer Banks Tuesday into Wednesday.
Separately, Hurricane Gaston is gathering strength as it moves northwestward in the Atlantic, but forecasters say it poses no threat to land. Because of the threat, the National Hurricane Center has issued a Hurricane Warning for the outer banks of the state.
Hurricane Hunter aircraft determined that the system had a closed center of circulation, and the National Hurricane Center issued its first advisory on Tropical Depression Nine at 5 pm Sunday. There is now a Tropical Storm Warning out for the Outer Banks, which means they could see tropical storm force winds. It is forecast to take a turn north Tuesday and begin barreling down on Florida’s Big Bend, making landfall as a tropical storm sometime Thursday.
Maximum sustained winds were also at 35 miles per hour with higher gusts.
Forecasters watched for more than a week as Tropical Depression 9 – then known as Invest 99L – chugged across the Atlantic, north of the Caribbean on a track for Florida and what was forecast to be prime conditions for strengthening into a hurricane.
Much closer to home we are monitoring Tropical Depression Nine in the southeastern Gulf of Mexico, this is the system that we were tracking last week known as Invest 99-L.
“Between the sheering that’s going on and the fast motion of the storm, it’s not really going to have much chance to grow much larger than a tropical storm right now”, said Peterson. Both are expected to become tropical storms by Tuesday.
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The big question is this: Will Tropical Depression 9 take a hard turn east as most forecasts predict? This is a weak storm, but it could strengthen into a low-end tropical storm by Monday as it makes a close approach to North Carolina. For more information regarding the tropics, please visit http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/.
