The Atlantic Ocean basin will remain active for the last full week of September, keeping those in the Caribbean and along the East coast of the United States on alert.
Despite passing the peak of hurricane season back on Sept. 10, several systems are churning in the Atlantic Ocean basin.
Jerry, which first became a tropical storm on Sept. 18, stayed well east of the Caribbean and now will aim for Bermuda in the coming days.
Instead, the next system to strike the Caribbean is Karen, which became a tropical storm on Sunday morning, local time, just in time to impact the Leeward and Windward islands.
On Sunday morning, flooding was being reported across Tobago in the Windward islands.
9:40am: Flooding continues in Tobago. Tropical Storm #Karen
The latest: ttweathercenter.com/tropical-updat…
61 people are talking about this
Midday on Sunday, local time, the national security minister of Trinidad and Tobago held a press conference and announced there would be no national shutdown on Monday, despite Karen, the national security shared on twitter.
Citizens should reman vigilant and heed any warnings and alerts issued by the government.
"Karen will bring locally heavy rainfall and wind gusts of 40-50 mph through Sunday night to Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago and St. Vincent and the Grenadines," said AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dan Pydynowski.
Winds of this magnitude will be capable of bringing sporadic power outages across the islands during that time.
Some electric outages were reported across Tobago on Sunday morning.
Coastal flooding and heavy downpours will also be a concern as Karen passes by. Combined, these impacts designate Karen as <1 on the AccuWeather RealImpact™ Scale for Hurricanes.
For Monday and much of Tuesday, Karen will move northwestward across the eastern Caribbean Sea. While the system will be far enough from the islands to bring damaging winds, some tropically-enhanced rainfall as well as rough seas and surf will continue.
Such a track to the north is eerily similar to that which Dorian took earlier this year, when it passed through the eastern Caribbean at the end of August.
Karen will gradually intensify as it tracks toward Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands early this week, according to Pydynowski, bringing and uptick in downpours and locally gusty winds as it approaches.
These conditions could persist through early Wednesday, until Karen moves out into the Atlantic, when it should be centered well east of the Bahamas.
"This will place Karen in a zone of warm waters and lessening wind shear midweek, which could allow the cyclone to intensify" Pydynowski added.
For the latter half of the week, the pattern across the northern Atlantic Ocean and the United States is likely to influence Karen's track. Should the high over Bermuda strengthen, the cyclone may try to turn westward late in the week.
Because of this, interests across the Bahamas and the southeastern United States should be carefully monitoring the track of Karen over the upcoming week.
RELATED:
In addition to watching Karen over the next week, AccuWeather meteorologists are also monitoring a tropical disturbance that emerged from the African coast early in the weekend.
Conditions look favorable for tropical development across the central Atlantic, which has been void of strengthening tropical cyclones thus far this season.
This disturbance is likely to become a tropical depression or storm within the next day or two, and perhaps even a hurricane by late in the week according to Pydynowski.
Should the system reach tropical storm strength this week, it would be given the name Lorenzo.
Through the middle to late week, the system will track mostly westward. While the most likely thinking is that it could be steered northward away from the land of the Western Hemisphere, interests along the Atlantic coast should still keep an eye on this disturbance.
The above satellite image shows Karen across the eastern Caribbean on Sunday morning. (Photo/RAMMB)
No comments:
Post a Comment