Atlantic hurricane season ‘heating’ up

(CNS): The hurricane experts at Colorado State University have warned that the second half of the Atlantic hurricane season is going to make 2020 a very busy and well-above average. In their latest forecast the weather watchers said they now expect a total of 24 named storms. “We have increased our forecast and now call for an extremely active 2020 Atlantic hurricane season,” the forecasters said in the August update.

Philip Klotzbach and his team at CSU said that sea surface temperatures across the tropical Atlantic are much warmer than normal, providing more fuel for tropical cyclones, and vertical wind shear is well below average. “We anticipate an above-normal probability for major hurricanes making landfall along the continental United States coastline and in the Caribbean,” they said.

By mid-morning Monday Tropical Storm Paulette was meandering toward the west-northwest at just three miles per hour. While the National Hurricane Center is predicting an increase in speed over the next few days, it says there will only be a modest increase in wind speed above the current 40mph.

But another depression off the Cabo Verde Islands on the west coast of Africa was predicted to become a tropical storm today, and another area of low pressure south of Bermuda was also looking as though it could organise into a cyclone.

TS Paulette is already the sixteenth storm this year in the Atlantic and entered the record books as the earliest ever storm starting with the letter ‘p’.

Here in the Cayman Islands local forecasters were calling for a rainy week with scattered showers associated with an upper level low pressure system over central Cuba. And to the east, a tropical wave over Jamaica is expected to move over the Cayman area this evening supporting more showers.

At the moment TS Paulette and what will be TS Rene pose no threat to the Cayman Islands, but with more storms than expected to come over the next few months residents are asked to prepare and take the necessary precautions for what could be a sudden arrival of a major hurricane.