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| Atlantic tropical cyclone activity. | |
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Jul 1, 2008 - Hurricane forecasters are monitoring a strong tropical wave which they believe has the potential to become the second tropical storm of this year's hurricane season.
The very large wave - accompanied by a large area of showers and thunderstorms and a weak surface low pressure centre - came off the African coast just after midnight on Tuesday.
"This wave shows some signs of organisation and environmental conditions could allow for some slow development of the system as it moves to the west at about 15 to 20mph," says Eric Blake, a specialist at the National Hurricane Centre in Miami.
Computer tracking models are indicating that the wave will develop into a tropical storm and then curve northward when it reaches mid-way between Africa and the Caribbean.
However, these models update every 12 hours as they recalculate the forecast based on current environmental data such as wind speed and direction at different levels of the atmosphere, Africa dust in the atmosphere, and sea surface temperature among other factors.
If it does develop it will become the first Cape Verde system of the season. It is so named because tropical waves develop over the African savannah in the wet season enter the Atlantic Ocean and quickly develop into a tropical depression around the Cape Verde Islands.
The average hurricane season has two Cape Verde hurricanes which are notorious for their fiercesome strength because they have a wide expanse of warm ocean water from which they draw their power. They also tend to form in August or September when the waters are warmest.
The last Cape Verde system was Hurricane Ivan which struck the Caribbean in September 2004 which formed at an unprecedented low latitude. It killed 63 people in Barbados, Cayman Islands, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago and left more than US$1 billion in damage.
At 2:00am EST, the tropical disturbance was estimated to be near 10.8 north and 16.5 west or about 2465 nautical miles east of the Caribbean travelling west ward at 15 to 20mph.
The National Hurricane Hurricane Centre will update the information every six hours at 2am and 2pm, 8am and 8pm daily. Coordinates may be plotted using a Hurricane Tracking Map.
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