A weather disturbance is churning through the Atlantic Ocean that could strengthen into a tropical storm Wednesday, threatening South Florida by the weekend.
The National Hurricane Center’s (NHC) 5:00ET advisory on Potential Tropical Cyclone 9 shows the disturbance was located about 385 miles east-southeast of San Juan, Puerto Rico, with winds of 45 mph and was moving west-northwest at 23 mph.
“Tropical storm conditions are likely across portions of the Leeward Islands, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico today and spreading westward to portions of the Dominican Republic and Haiti on Thursday,” NHC said.
The disturbance is expected to strengthen today as tropical storm warnings have been posted for Puerto Rico, Vieques, Culebra, the U.S. and the British Virgin Islands, Antigua, Barbuda, Montserrat, St. Kitts, Nevis, Anguilla, Guadeloupe, Martinique, St. Martin, St. Barthelemy, Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Maarten, and parts of the Dominican Republic and north coast of Haiti, said NBC Miami.
Here is the latest update on Potential Tropical Cyclone Nine! Watch @juliedurdawplg for more. pic.twitter.com/CiBjYBnREq
— Julie Durda (@JulieDurdaWPLG) July 29, 2020
NHC’s five-day weather model tracker shows the tropical storm could make landfall in South Florida by early Sunday morning.
If the storm does track towards South Florida, this could be problematic for the state, already dealing with an explosion of COVID-19 cases and recently recorded a record number of virus-deaths.