MIAMI.- The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) monitors this Friday four low-pressure systems formed in the Atlantic basin, one of which has a high chance of becoming a tropical depression in the next 48 hours.
According to a morning bulletin from the meteorological center, a large area of low pressure located a few hundred kilometers west of the African islands of Cape Verde has “proper environmental conditions” that would allow it to become a tropical depression this weekend or early next week.
This system, which has a 60% chance of becoming a depression in the next two days, produces heavy rains and storms, and moves west-northwest at about 16 kilometers per hour (km/h).
It also produces disorganized showers and thunderstorms, a “elongated low pressure trough” located between Cape Verde and the Lesser Antilles, although it presents medium possibilities of becoming a tropical depression in the coming days in view of the forecast of shear winds in the area.
The NHC meteorologists are also monitoring a low area to the east-southeast of the Lesser Antilles that is moving at about 24 km/h in a northwesterly direction, although for now it has a low chance (30%) of developing into a cyclone in the next few 48 hours.
On the other hand, next week a large area of low pressure could form to the west of the Gulf of Mexico from “an area of climatic disturbance” that is currently north of the island of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic).
Once it reaches the Gulf this system will have a “slow builder” as it approaches the west coast of the Gulf of Mexico in the middle of next week.
Hurricane season in the Atlantic basin runs from June 1 to November 30.
So far, five tropical storms have formed and one of them, Don, became a category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson intensity scale last July, out of a maximum of five.
In an update released on August 10, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) increased its forecast for this year and predicted a hurricane season in the Atlantic “above normal”, with the formation of between 14 and 21 tropical storms, of which between 6 and 11 would be hurricanes.
