MIAMI — Much of the eastern Caribbean is under a tropical storm warning ahead of a disturbance that has a high chance of becoming Tropical Storm Fred within a day or so. South Florida is also in the seven-day cone.
As of Monday’s 5 p.m. EDT update, the National Hurricane Center began issuing advisories for what was labeled as potential tropical cyclone 6. Forecasters gave it an 80% chance of strengthening into a tropical depression in the next two days and predicted it could become a tropical storm by the time it approaches Puerto Rico on late Tuesday afternoon.
It was about 165 miles east-southeast of Dominica with maximum sustained winds of 35 mph.
Along with the advisory came tropical storm warnings for Guadeloupe, Martinique, Dominica, Puerto Rico, including Culebra and Vieques, the U.S. Virgin Islands and most of the Dominican Republic.
Forecasters said the storm was moving west-northwest at 15 mph on Monday afternoon, which puts it on track to reach the Lesser Antilles on Monday night, Puerto Rico on Tuesday evening and near the Dominican Republic and Haiti by midweek. For Puerto Rico, still recovering from major hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, the biggest threat appeared to be flooding and mudslides from a predicted 2 to 4 inches of rain.
Craig Setzer, chief meteorologist at WFOR-TV, tweeted that hurricane models show the storm potentially moving northwest over several large islands in the Caribbean, “which means very high uncertainty on intensity (and) Fla impacts.”
Despite the uncertainty of the potential storm’s path, most models appear to forecast a tropical storm at strongest, possibly from all the dry air between the system and Puerto Rico. The hurricane center’s latest projections show the storm’s winds topping out around 50 mph, at least 20 mph away from Category 1 hurricane status.
Forecasters noted that as of Monday afternoon the disturbance didn’t have a defined center. Until that develops, forecast models tend to be less accurate.
“Exactly where the center forms will have some downstream implications on the exact forecast track, especially across the eastern Caribbean,” hurricane center forecasters wrote in the 5 p.m. update.
Jim Cantore, a meteorologist with the weather channel, tweeted out early images of the disturbance showing up on Barbados radar Monday morning and reminded viewers that possible Florida impacts will be easier to understand later in the week.
“Atmospheric pitfalls await 94L, but could see whatever it becomes or doesn’t come close to FL late week into weekend,” he tweeted.
Despite the uncertainty, the Miami office of the National Weather Service warned South Floridians that “widespread and heavy rain” could be possible over the weekend.
The hurricane center is also tracking another disturbance a few hundred miles east of the other one, but forecasters gave the second system no chance of strengthening in the next five days and noted that development is “no longer expected.”
Last week, NOAA revised its predictions for the 2021 hurricane season to include slightly more named storms — 15 to 21. Five named storms have already occurred.
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