Tropical Storm Jerry, the tenth named storm of the 2019 hurricane season, formed Wednesday east of the Caribbean and is likely to strengthen into a hurricane by the end of the week, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Jerry is forecast to track just north of Puerto Rico, with tropical storm-force winds arriving on the island during the day Friday. The five-day forecast cone shows the storm turning north before reaching the Bahamas, but the hurricane center warned that Jerry is still in the Atlantic and its exact path is far from certain.
On Wednesday morning, Jerry was located about 960 miles east of the Caribbean with maximum sustained winds of 45 mph as it moved toward the west-northwest at 13 mph.
“It is far too early to determine what, if any, impacts there could be to Florida or any part of the U.S.,” National Hurricane Center spokesman and meteorologist Dennis Feltgen said 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.
So far, Jerry’s forecast cone predicts that the storm will pass close to or north of the northeastern corner of the Caribbean on Friday.
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 tropics remain extremely active, with four systems being monitored by the hurricane center.
Bermuda is under a hurricane warning for category 3 Hurricane Humberto, which is expected to bring high winds, heavy rain and a dangerous storm surge to the island Wednesday night and into Thursday. Ocean swells from Humberto are affecting the southeast coast of the U.S. from east-central Florida to North Carolina, the hurricane center said.
At 8 a.m., Humberto was about 240 miles west of Bermuda with maximum sustained winds of 115 mph as the storm moves east-northeast at 16 mph.
A Category 3 hurricane is strong enough to rip roofs off houses and leave widespread devastation.
Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 60 miles from the center and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 175 miles.
In Texas, Tropical Storm Imelda deteriorated into a tropical depression and was about 25 miles northwest of Houston and moving further inland on Wednesday morning.
The weather system is threatening to bring heavy rainfall and life-threatening flash flooding to impact parts of the Texas coast.
Imelda is the first named storm to impact the Houston area since Hurricane Harvey, according to the National Weather Service. Harvey dumped nearly 50 inches of rain on parts of the flood prone city in August 2017, flooding more than 150,000 homes in the Houston area and causing an estimated $125 billion in damage in Texas.
Other disturbances are also being monitored.
Disturbance 1 is a tropical wave in the far eastern Atlantic Ocean that is producing disorganized cloudiness and showers. As of Wednesday, the system is being given no chance of becoming tropical in the next two days and a 30% chance in the next five days as it approaches the southeastern Caribbean early next week.
Another tropical wave is forecast to move off the west coast of Africa on Thursday. It’s being given only a 10% chance of becoming a tropical cyclone during the next five days.
A tropical cyclone can take the form of a tropical depression, tropical storm, or hurricane.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
