Area of low pressure off Florida coast being monitored
With a few more weeks left in hurricane season, the National Hurricane Center is monitoring an area of low pressure located several hundred miles off Florida’s east coast for potential development.
It has a 20% chance of developing in the next five days, likely somewhere between the Bahamas and Bermuda, according to the latest forecast. It is expected tomove in a northeastward direction.
Meanwhile, a second disturbance that formed off the coast of Costa Rica is expected to move southwest across the Caribbean, though its odds of developing further dropped to 0% as of Thursday afternoon, according to the National
Hurricane Center.
Regardless, it is forecast to bring heavy rains to Colombia and Nicaragua, the location that has been recently ravaged by Hurricane Iota and Hurricane Eta and Colombia.
The 2020 hurricane season became the busiest in recorded history when Tropical Storm Theta formed on Nov. 9. Only 2005 has had more hurricanes on record, at 15, Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach said.
Most recently, Hurricane Iota made land fall Monday night in northeastern Nicaragua as a Category 4 storm with winds of 155 mph — just 15 miles south of where Hurricane Eta came ashore twoweeks ago.
Iota was stronger, based on central pressure, than 2005s Hurricane Katrina and is the first storm with a Greek alphabet name to hit Category 5, Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach said. It also set the record for the latest Category 5 hurricane on record, beating the record set by the Nov. 8, 1932, Cuba Hurricane.
This hurricane season has been marked by storms — such as Hannah, Laura, Sally, Teddy, Gamma, Delta and Zeta — that have “rapidly intensified,” meaning a gain of at least 35 mph in wind speed in a 24-hour period. Iota doubled that mark in the overnight hours Sunday, going from a Category 2 hurricane to a Category 4.
Iota dissipated over western El Salvador on Wednesday.
The next named storm would be Kappa.