The National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami, Florida has increased odds that an area of low pressure well south of New Jersey and well east of Georgia will become a tropical cyclone in the coming days. Even if a tropical cyclone doesn’t materialize, the system is still on a collision course with the East Coast and will bring rain and gusty winds to the coast by late tomorrow night. The NHC says an Air Force Reserve Unit reconnaissance aircraft is scheduled to investigate this system tomorrow afternoon, if necessary.
Image: NHC
According to the NHC, satellite imagery and nearby buoy and ship observations indicate that a small low pressure system has formed about 500 miles east-southeast of the Georgia-South Carolina border. Surface pressures have begun to fall across the area, and showers and thunderstorms have recently become better organized. Some additional development of this system will be possible later today, and especially on Monday when the system will move across the warmer waters of the Gulf Stream, and a tropical depression could form before the system makes landfall along the southern U.S. coast. The low is expected to move westward today, and then west-northwestward at about 15 mph on Monday, reaching the coast of the southeastern United States by late Monday.
The National Hurricane Center still isn’t certain that a full tropical cyclone will form here over the next 36 hours, putting 50-50 odds of development on the system.
The NHC is also monitoring another disturbance over the central Atlantic. However, that is less likely than the system closest to the U.S. to develop into a tropical cyclone over the next 2-5 days.
