HEAVY RAIN, RIP CURRENTS EXPECTED IN REGION
Tropical storm warnings with heavy winds, rain issued for Gulf Coast as system organizes.
Expect heavy downpours and treacherous surf on Labor Day in Palm Beach County, as a strong tropical wave from the southern Bahamas pushes storms towards the region, causing riptides and possible flooding in low-lying areas.
And that was the good news. Forecasters said Sunday the wave had a better than 80 percent chance to turn into a named cyclone and issued tropical storm watches for the central Gulf Coast. It said tropical storm conditions are possible in those areas Tuesday or Wednesday night.
If it does develop, it would be dubbed Tropical Storm Gordon, the seventh cyclone of the Atlantic hurricane season. The wave at 8 p.m. Sunday night was situated between Cuba and The Bahamas
and moving west-northwest. Its current forecast has it quickly developing into a depression and then a tropical storm by this afternoon just north of the Florida Keys before heading toward Louisiana.
The concern is that the system will grow stronger once it reaches the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. There, it will have plenty of warm water to “feast on,” said Jeff Masters, co-founder of Weather Underground. At 86 degrees, the Gulf is running 1.8 degrees warmer than normal.
“The total amount of heat energy in the Gulf right now is at near-record levels for this time of year — similar to last year’s levels, and much higher than observed during the awful hurricane season of 2005,” Masters wrote in his Cat 6 blog.
Last year on Sept. 10, Hurricane Irma hit the Florida Keys as a Category 4 storm. It caused $100 million in damage to Palm Beach County alone.
Tropical activity for the 2018 storm season has been normal in the number of named storms
and number of hurricanes. Whether it develops into a tropical storm or not, the system was expected to push strong
thunderstorms into Palm Beach County late Sunday night or early this morning, with wind gusts of up to 45 miles per hour — or higher. The National Weather Ser- vice cautions that especially along the coast, there could be sporadic flooding and power outages.
A strong clockwise-spin- ning Bermuda High is driv- ing all this weather toward Florida.
Cities from Boca Raton to Jupiter are expected to receive 2 to 3 inches of rain with isolated waterspouts or tornadoes possible.
Surfers and swimmers willing to risk rain will face a sec- ond wet threat; a high prob- ability of rip currents. The National Weather Service reported that strong rip cur- rents will be hazardous to anyone in the surf in Palm Beach County and other Southeast Florida beaches. Rip cur- rents are dangerous chan- nels of water flowing quickly away from shore. Swimmers caught up in the current can be pulled out to sea.
Winds are also brewing off the coast of Africa. As of 5 p.m. Sunday, the National Weather Service reported that Tropical Storm Florence was about 700 miles west-northwest of the southern tip of the Cabo Verde Islands and moving west at about 17 miles per hour.
Florence weakened slightly during daylight hours Sun- day to 50 miles an hour, putting it below the 74 miles per hour threshold for hurricane status.
Tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 60 miles from the center. No major change in the storm’s strength is expected through Tuesday.