And so it starts........It's not what any of us want to see, but this storm is following a similar track to Ivan in '04. It is forcast to cross Grand Caymen as a "1", but there is a lot of warm water south of Cuba and certainly in the Gulf - lets hope it doesn't get worse. I have friends on Caymen and around the Gulf of Mexico.
M.
Tropical Storm Ernesto May Form in Caribbean, Head for Jamaica
By Margot Habiby
Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Tropical Storm Ernesto, the fifth storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, is expected to form today out of a tropical depression in the Caribbean and head northwest toward Jamaica, forecasters said.
Ernesto was about 275 miles (442 kilometers) southwest of Martinique and about 386 miles south-southeast of San Juan, Puerto Rico, according to an 11 p.m. statement from the Miami- based National Hurricane Center yesterday. It's moving to the west at about 16 knots, or 18 mph.
Storm watches and warnings for Jamaica could be issued as early as this afternoon, hurricane center meteorologist Mark McInerney said, adding that residents should ``stay diligent and watch what's going on.'' Forecasts indicate the system will pass near Jamaica on Aug. 27 before heading toward the Gulf of Mexico as a tropical storm.
``It's going to skate between most of the land masses in the channel'' south of Cuba,'' McInerney said, citing current trajectories. ``Jamaica is the closest.''
It's too soon to tell whether the storm will continue into the Gulf, he said.
Data from a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane, known as a ``hurricane hunter,'' indicated yesterday that the system had developed characteristics of a tropical cyclone, the hurricane center said. The storm had maximum sustained winds of about 34.6 miles per hour (55.7 kilometers per hour) -- just 4.4 mph shy of the threshold for a named tropical storm.
Debby
The Caribbean storm has overshadowed Tropical Storm Debby, which is gaining strength over the open waters of the eastern Atlantic Ocean though is expected to remain at sea. Debby is forecast to become a hurricane next week, bringing top winds of more than 74 mph.
Debby had top sustained winds of about 52 mph as of 11 p.m. Miami time, the hurricane center said. The storm's center was about 1,616 miles east-southeast of Bermuda, and it was moving west-northwest at about 18 mph.
While Debby is forecast to become a hurricane Aug. 28, five- day forecasts show it gradually will turn north and then northeast and remain far out at sea.
Including Debby, there have been four named tropical storms since the Atlantic season began June 1, though no hurricanes.
Peak Season
If Ernesto forms it would be the third tropical storm this month and the second in what forecasters say is the peak hurricane season, roughly mid-August through October.
Joe Bastar*i (had to remove the "d" to bypas SH's filter), a forecaster for AccuWeather in State College, Pennsylvania, said earlier this week that he expects a burst of tropical storms during the next four to five weeks. The season ends Nov. 30.
By this time a year ago, the Atlantic had produced 11 named storms, four of them hurricanes.
The 11th storm, Katrina, became a tropical storm a year ago. As Hurricane Katrina, it was the costliest in U.S. history, causing an estimated $81 billion in damage. It came ashore Aug. 29, 2005, and produced floods that devastated New Orleans, killed more than 1,800 people, and cut most oil and gas production in the Gulf.
To contact the reporter on this story: Margot Habiby in Dallas at mhabiby@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: August 25, 2006 00:00 EDT