A system of showers and thunderstorms over the central Bahamas will drench South Florida over the next few days and chances of it turning into a tropical depression within five days increased to 90% Friday afternoon, the National Hurricane Center said.
Meanwhile, forecasters have also started watching a system far off in the eastern Atlantic that has formed showers and thunderstorms associated with a tropical wave. That system is being given a 50% chance of developing over the next five days.
As for the disturbance in the Bahamas, it has a 70% chance of tropical development during the next 48 hours as it moves northwestward toward Florida’s east coast.
If the system develops into a tropical disturbance and grows into a tropical storm it will be the fourth one in the 2019 hurricane season to get a name. It would be Dorian.
“The low pressure area just east of the coast of southeastern Florida is becoming better organized,” Senior Hurricane Specialist Jack Beven wrote in the hurricane center’s 2 p.m. update.
Because the system is projected to move near or over Florida’s land mass today, its development will be limited until it reaches the open Atlantic waters during the weekend.
Still, because of all the tropical moisture in the atmosphere, South Florida can expect to see rain throughout most of the weekend.
According to the National Weather Service, there’s a 70% chance of rain Friday and 60% Saturday and Sunday.
The other disturbance, in the eastern Atlantic, is moving in a generally westward direction at about 15 mph. According to the hurricane center, it has only a 10% chance of forming into a tropical cyclone over the next two days and 20% over the next five days.
Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Chantal, which became the third named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, quickly ran into cooler water temperatures and drier air which sapped its strength.
On Friday, Chantal was a depression in the open waters nearly 800 miles west of the Azores and is forecast to degenerate into a remnant low by tonight and fully dissipate by late in the weekend.
We are well into hurricane season and forecasters have warned that we may see more dangerous storms this year than originally predicted as conditions become more favorable going into the peak of hurricane season.
Hurricane season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, but 95% of storms are produced during the 21/2 months of its peak, from mid-August to late October.
