Now Hurricane Irene has done her damage along the east coast of the United States and is blowing herself out we don’t have much time to catch our breath before worrying about another storm. Tropical Depression #12 has developed to the south of the Cape Verde Islands Monday (29) morning. This depression is expected to slowly strengthen over the next few days as it encounters some easterly wind shear. Even with the easterly wind shear, environmental conditions should be favourable for strengthening throughout this week.

Rob Lightbown on his Crown Weather website said on Monday that he expects the depression to become Tropical Storm Katia by Tuesday morning and reach hurricane strength by late this week.

At the time of writing, all the models indicate that the storm will pass well north of us but I remember well Hurricane Ivan’s path was shown to be similarly projected this far out. We all know what happened. This is what Mr. Lightbown says:

“Needless to say, it is way too early to be confident or certain on any one forecast track. The GFS operational model is biased with forecasting tracks that take systems into the open Atlantic too quickly. I do think there are a couple of possibilities: The first is a track that takes this system about a couple of hundred miles north and east of the northern Leeward Islands next Monday and then impact Bermuda by late next week. The other possibility is that this could conceivably head towards the Caribbean and miss the upper level trough of low pressure that is forecast over the western Atlantic in 8 to 10 days from now. The track model guidance is slowly trending towards that direction and I will continue to closely monitor these model trends. Right now, I am leaning towards a track that eventually takes this very close to, if not right over the northeastern Caribbean next weekend followed by a turn to the north and a threat to Bermuda and the Canadian Maritimes late next week into
next weekend.”

Please monitor this storm closely and go to Crown Weather Services at www.crownweather.com and to the National Hurricane Center at www.nhc.noaa.gov/. We wish to thank Crown Weather for the permission to use their graphics and information. Please support them.

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