The tropical disturbance north-northeast of Haiti have likely decreased below tropical storm strength, according to the latest information from the National Weather Service Thursday afternoon.
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Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Gaston is still churning out in the Atlantic Ocean, headed away from land, but it may strengthen back into a hurricane Friday night or Saturday, forecasters said. Activity is expected to spread over eastern and central Cuba through the weekend. If it becomes a tropical storm, it will be named Hermine.
The storm has not formed a well-defined circulation center, which makes forecasting the intensity and direction system hard, forecasters reported.
“An area of low pressure associated with a tropical wave is centered just southeast of the Turks and Caicos Islands”.
If, by some chance, this system became a hurricane and hit Florida, it’d be the first hurricane to make landfall in Florida since Wilma in October 2005.
The National Hurricane Center predicted 2016 to be the strongest hurricane season since 2012, according to its updated Hurricane Season Outlook released in August.
With any expected development or not, officials remind people that the storm will bring gusty winds and heavy downpours to many areas in the Caribbean, from Puerto Rico and Hispaniola till it reaches the Bahamas.
A flash flood watch was in effect for St Croix in the US Virgin Islands through midnight Wednesday. We’re seeing evidence of this with the increasing number of storm systems churning in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
The U.S. Air Force Hurricane Hunters flight scheduled for Friday to investigate the disturbance has been canceled. The NHC says the storm’s maximum sustained winds Thursday were near 70 miles per hour (110 kph) with a turn toward the west-northwest and a decrease in forward speed expected on Saturday.
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There is a lot of uncertainty regarding the track and intensity of this system because there are many environmental factors that could impact the wave on its journey.
