Tropical depression likely to form within 48 hours, to affect eastern Caribbean by Friday

Robin Webb, Bill Kearney, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Updated ·1 min read

A tropical depression is likely to form within 48 hours from a system expected to move west to northwest toward the Caribbean, forecasters said early Tuesday.

That system, located roughly 1,100 miles east of the far eastern Caribbean, has a 70% chance of developing in the next two days and an 80% chance in the next seven days, according to the National Hurricane Center’s 2 p.m. advisory.

The current forecast and models have the system eventually curving northwest away from Florida, but the islands of the far eastern Caribbean, such as the Lesser Antilles, could be affected.

“Regardless of development, this system has the potential to bring gusty winds, heavy rainfall and flooding to portions of the Lesser Antilles beginning Friday,” the NHC said.

So far this season in the Atlantic, there have been 18 named storms, six of which were hurricanes. Of those, three were major hurricanes, meaning Category 3 or above.

Those were Hurricane Lee, a rare Category 5; Hurricane Franklin, a Category 4; and Hurricane Idalia, which made landfall on Florida’s Big Bend region at Category 3 strength on Aug. 30.

The remaining storm names for 2023 are Tammy, Vince and Whitney. If all those names end up being used this season, the National Hurricane Center would turn to the supplemental list of names from the World Meteorological Association. In previous years, the Greek alphabet was used for additional storm names — which had only happened twice before — during the record-shattering hurricane seasons in 2005 and 2020.

Hurricane season officially runs through Nov. 30.