FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ A tropical depression moving toward the Caribbean is forecast to become a tropical storm overnight and a hurricane by the end of the week, the National Hurricane Center said Tuesday. If it does become the next named storm, it will be Jerry.
The depression was about 1,000 miles east of the Caribbean and is forecast to travel generally toward the Bahamas, according to the hurricane center's Tuesday evening public advisory.
But the system is still distant and its exact path is far from certain. It is too early to predict if it would hit the Bahamas, Florida or any other land mass.
"It is far too early to determine what, if any, impacts there could be to Florida or any part of the U.S.," said National Hurricane Center spokesman and meteorologist Dennis Feltgen in an email. "We are in the peak of the hurricane season, so residents should make sure their hurricane plan is ready to be used if needed."
The National Hurricane Center's forecast cone represents the range of possibilities in terms of a storm's potential path. The cone gets bigger as the days in the forecast period get further away. This is because longer-term predictions in terms of a storm's path and intensity are more difficult to make _ so the range of possibilities becomes larger.
As of Tuesday at 5 p.m. EDT, the cone was predicting that the depression would be a tropical storm by Tuesday night. The tropical storm would then travel in a northwesterly direction on a path that would take the storm close to or north of the northeastern corner of the Caribbean on Friday. By this point it's expected to be a hurricane.
While the southern edge of the cone was touching the U.S. and British Virgin Islands as well as Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and the southeastern Bahamas, most of the cone was remaining out in the open Atlantic Ocean away from land.
The depression was churning to the northwest at 10 mph but was expected to step on the gas and increase its forward speed over the next few days.
Meanwhile Bermuda is under a hurricane warning as Hurricane Humberto has grown slightly stronger, with the storm's winds now reaching 105 mph, up from 100 mph earlier Tuesday. Humberto is a Category 2 hurricane.
Humberto, which is expected to pass "just to the northwest and north of Bermuda on Wednesday night," could possibly become a major hurricane late Tuesday or on Wednesday.
A major hurricane would mean the storm would be a Category 3 hurricane, which would mean it would be packing winds of at least 111 mph, strong enough to rip roofs off houses and leave widespread devastation.
Humberto is also a big one in terms of its sheer size.
"Humberto is a large hurricane," the National Hurricane Center said in the 5 p.m. Tuesday advisory. "Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 60 miles from the center and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 175 miles."
Meanwhile in the Gulf of Mexico, Tropical Storm Imelda formed on Tuesday and by 8 p.m. had weakened back down to Tropical Depression status.
It was five miles north of Houston, moving northward and inland with winds measuring 35 mph. The National Hurricane Center was warning that heavy rainfall and life-threatening flash flooding was expected to impact parts of the Texas coast.
Meanwhile yet another disturbance, this one closer to the coast of Africa, has also emerged and has been given a 20% chance of formation over the next few days. This disturbance is expected to move west but it was far too early to predict where it'll go and how powerful it might get.
