TBO: Forecast: Tropical Storm Alex likely to form in Caribbean
By ROB SHAW | The Tampa Tribune
Published: June 25, 2010
Invest #93 Forecast Models - Zoom Level 1
Get ready to say hello to Alex, it appears.
There is a 70 percent chance that the area of disturbed weather between Honduras and Grand Cayman will become the first named storm of the season, officials at the National Hurricane Center said this morning.
“It remains in an area of favorable development and it has become better organized since the wee hours of the morning,” said Dennis Feltgen, spokesman for the center. “Upper-level winds are favorable. It has a lot of things going for it right now.”
An Air Force reconnaissance plane will be checking out the area early this afternoon to see if it has grown into a depression or a storm, Feltgen said. A tropical storm has sustained winds of 39 mph or higher.
When or if it does form, the models of where it might go are all over the place, the hurricane center spokesman said. Most generally take aim at the Yucatan Peninsula and then perhaps into the Gulf of Mexico, he added.
“It’s not a central or South Florida problem, we know that,” Feltgen said. “Beyond that, anything is possible at this point.”
Elsewhere in the tropics, forecasters are also watching a large area of disorganized clouds and showers just east of the northern Leeward Islands associated with a tropical wave and upper level trough. There is only a 10 percent chance of it becoming a tropical system in the next 48 hours.
Source & Copyright: TBO.com
