The tropics are firing up

Just this afternoon, we’ve seen the development of a new tropical storm. We now have Imelda just off the Texas coast. This system became designated as a depression and then quickly upgraded to a tropical storm. The system will bring torrential rainfall to portions of Texas, including the Houston area. I’m afraid we’ll be seeing the flooding in the news headlines sooner than later. These are some of the same areas that were so devastated by Harvey a couple years ago.

We also have a new tropical depression that has formed and it will soon become Jerry. This system had looked like it would just curve out to sea but now I’m not so sure. Jerry will strengthen into a hurricane as he makes his way toward the Caribbean this weekend. Where he goes from there is anyone’s guess right now.

We also have yet another tropical wave to watch that will be coming off the Africa coast soon. There are strong indications that this will become a tropical storm/hurricane over the coming week.

And we can’t forget Hurricane Humberto in the Atlantic. He is still a very real threat to Bermuda. The good news is that it looks like the storm will not reach major hurricane status, after all (winds of 115 mph). He is currently a cat 2 hurricane, with winds of 100 mph. He appears to be holding steady at that strength.

It is important to note that there are several global signals that indicate that the next two to three weeks are going to be extremely active in the tropics. Keep this in mind if you have tropical travel plans.