Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Tropics getting busy again
As forecasters warn that there’s still plenty of hurricane season remaining, the National Hurricane Center is tracking four disturbances in the Atlantic Ocean.
The one that seems most worth keeping an eye on is a tropical wave off the coast of Africa that the Hurricane Center says has a 60 percent chance of forming into a tropical cyclone in the next five days as it moves across the Atlantic.
The system is still more than 2,000 miles from South Florida.
“Showers and thunderstorms associated with a tropical wave located about 600 miles southeast of the Cabo Verde Islands are showing some signs of organization,” the Miami-based hurricane center said in an advisory Friday morning. “The environment is forecast to be conducive for slow development, and a tropical depression could form early next week while the system moves westward at 15 to 20 mph across the low latitudes of the eastern and central tropical Atlantic Ocean.”
The Hurricane Center said chances were low (20 percent) that a tropical depression would form in the next 48 hours, but those odds rose to 60 percent when forecasting for the next five days.
Looking further north, the Hurricane Center is watching a non-tropical low pressure system forecast to develop Friday night over the central subtropical Atlantic Ocean midway between Bermuda and the Azores.
“Conditions are expected to be conducive for the low to acquire subtropical or tropical characteristics, and a subtropical or tropical cyclone is expected to form late this weekend or early next week while the low meanders over the central Atlantic Ocean,” the Hurricane Center said Friday morning, predicting a 70 percent chance of formation change through five days.
The two other systems — one well north of South Florida and the other well south — have a low chance of forming into a tropical cyclone, the National Hurricane Center says. A tropical cyclone can take the form of a tropical depression, tropical storm, or hurricane.
We’ve already passed the historical peak of hurricane season (Sept. 10), but don’t let your guard down yet.
The season runs through Nov. 30.
“The coming weeks into mid-October often bring several additional tropical storms and hurricanes,” AccuWeather senior meteorologist Alex Sosnowski wrote in a post Friday. “This year may not be any exception.”
As hurricane expert Dan Kottlowski added in that AccuWeather post, “Even though we are over the hump, in terms of the average peak of hurricane season, there is still more of hurricane season to go.”