Humberto skirts Bahamas

The Bahamas breathed a sigh of relief as a new storm changed course Saturday and skirted the islands that were devastated by Hurricane Dorian less than two weeks ago.

The new storm, Tropical Storm Humberto, was never expected to be as destructive as Dorian, a Category 5 hurricane that killed at least 50 people, a death toll that is expected to increase drastically. Even so, Humberto threatened to complicate the already difficult task of rescue workers, who were still searching for about 1,300 missing people.

The National Hurricane Center said Saturday that Humberto was likely to strengthen gradually and become a hurricane by Sunday night, but that it would gradually move away from the northwestern Bahamas before then. Heavy rain was still expected in parts of the Bahamas, with up to six inches in spots.

In the southeastern United States, some areas of the Florida and Georgia coasts were expected to get up to one inch of rain.

“It’s a blessing to us that it’s staying out in the Atlantic Ocean,” Trevor Basden, director of the Bahamian government’s Department of Meteorology, said on Saturday afternoon. “We should be dropping the storm warnings this evening.”

The Bahamas had been bracing for a possible direct hit, but Basden said the storm system got no closer than about 30 miles east of Marsh Harbour, the town on Great Abaco Island that was torn apart by the hurricane two weeks ago.

The system’s most intense winds and rain were north and east of the storm’s center, on the opposite side from the Bahamas, he said.

The islands were “spared of the wind, for sure, and also much of the rain,” he added.