Tropical Storm Isaac is becoming better organized and is forecast to strengthen into a hurricane tomorrow as it heads toward the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean Sea, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
Isaac, the ninth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season that runs through November, was about 280 miles east of Guadeloupe and moving west at 18 miles (30 kilometers) per hour, the Miami-based center said in an advisory at 5 a.m. local time. The system contained maximum sustained winds of 45 mph, below the minimum 74 mph speed of a Category 1 hurricane.
The center’s tracking map shows the system crossing Haiti as a hurricane on Aug. 25 and striking Cuba the next day before arriving at the edge of Florida Keys early on Aug. 27. A hurricane churning over Florida next week may coincide with the Republican National Convention, at which the party will officially nominate Mitt Romney as its candidate for president. The event is scheduled for Aug. 27 to Aug. 30 in Tampa, Florida.
“It would take ’perfect storm’ sort of conditions to all fall in place” for the system to reach Tampa as a hurricane during the convention, Jeff Masters, co-founder of Weather Underground in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said on his blog. “That is one of the possibilities.”
Hurricane watches were issued for Puerto Rico, Vieques, Culebra, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the south coast of the Dominican Republic, the center said. Tropical-storm warnings were in effect for islands including Martinique, Dominica, Guadeloupe, St. Martin and St. Kitts.
As much as 8 inches (20.3 centimeters) of rain may drop over the northern Windward Islands and the Leeward Islands, according to the hurricane center. A storm surge may raise water levels as much as 3 feet (0.9 meters) above normal in the Northern Leeward Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, “accompanied by dangerous waves,” it said.
The center was tracking two other weather systems in the Atlantic. A low-pressure area 650 miles west-southwest of the Cape Verde Islands has a 90 percent of becoming a tropical cyclone in the next two days, it said. Another over the far- western Gulf of Mexico has a near zero percent probability of turning tropical.
To contact the reporters on this story: Yee Kai Pin in Singapore at [email protected]; Rupert Rowling in London at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss at [email protected]
Isaac, the ninth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season that runs through November, was about 280 miles east of Guadeloupe and moving west at 18 miles (30 kilometers) per hour, the Miami-based center said in an advisory at 5 a.m. local time. The system contained maximum sustained winds of 45 mph, below the minimum 74 mph speed of a Category 1 hurricane.
The center’s tracking map shows the system crossing Haiti as a hurricane on Aug. 25 and striking Cuba the next day before arriving at the edge of Florida Keys early on Aug. 27. A hurricane churning over Florida next week may coincide with the Republican National Convention, at which the party will officially nominate Mitt Romney as its candidate for president. The event is scheduled for Aug. 27 to Aug. 30 in Tampa, Florida.
“It would take ’perfect storm’ sort of conditions to all fall in place” for the system to reach Tampa as a hurricane during the convention, Jeff Masters, co-founder of Weather Underground in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said on his blog. “That is one of the possibilities.”
Hurricane watches were issued for Puerto Rico, Vieques, Culebra, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the south coast of the Dominican Republic, the center said. Tropical-storm warnings were in effect for islands including Martinique, Dominica, Guadeloupe, St. Martin and St. Kitts.
As much as 8 inches (20.3 centimeters) of rain may drop over the northern Windward Islands and the Leeward Islands, according to the hurricane center. A storm surge may raise water levels as much as 3 feet (0.9 meters) above normal in the Northern Leeward Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, “accompanied by dangerous waves,” it said.
The center was tracking two other weather systems in the Atlantic. A low-pressure area 650 miles west-southwest of the Cape Verde Islands has a 90 percent of becoming a tropical cyclone in the next two days, it said. Another over the far- western Gulf of Mexico has a near zero percent probability of turning tropical.
To contact the reporters on this story: Yee Kai Pin in Singapore at [email protected]; Rupert Rowling in London at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss at [email protected]