Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
National Hurricane Center monitoring four disturbances; two likely to become tropical depressions later this week
The National Hurricane Center was monitoring four disturbances on Sunday night, two of which could become tropical depressions in the next few days.
The first, a tropical wave in the eastern Caribbean Sea, has a 70% chance of becoming a cyclone over the next 48 hours, according to the hurricane center.
The hurricane center’s 8 p.m. Sunday tropical weather outlook showed that the disturbance was expected to travel on a northwest path toward the area of Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
The wave was moving at 15 mph and was a few hundred miles west of the Windward Islands, which include Dominica, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and
Grenada.
The NHC was also monitoring a second wave in the eastern Atlantic, south of the Cabo Verde islands off Africa. It was expected to move slowly with some development possible early next week over the eastern or central tropical Atlantic. It has a 20% chance of development over the next five days.
Another tropical wave was expected to move off the African Coast in a couple of days, the hurricane center said. It had a 30% chance over the next five days.
Finally, a low pressure area was developing in the Atlantic Ocean a few hundred miles east of Jacksonville, the hurricane center said.
A tropical depression was expected to form by mid-week and the system was expected to move to the northeast, parallel to the U.S. East Coast, and then away from land.
This is the time of year when storms tend to form in the open Atlantic, particularly near the Cabo Verde Islands. Those storms, which grow in size and intensity as they make the long trek westward across the Atlantic Ocean, are historically the most powerful and destructive hurricanes.
The next two named storms in the busy 2020 Atlantic hurricane season will be Nana and Omar.
Earlier this month, the federal government issued an updated forecast for the season, predicting as many as 25 storms, which is more than the agency has ever forecast.
The tropical weather experts at Colorado State University predicted that 2020 could possibly be the second-busiest season on record, behind only 2005, the year that produced Katrina and Wilma.