Today Friday Tropical Storm Fiona is approaching the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean with 50 mph winds. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) projects that it will become a hurricane that will affect the Bahamas next week.
About 5 pm Fiona was located about 20 miles east-northeast of Guadeloupe with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph and higher gusts. Its tropical storm force winds extend out to 140 miles.
The NHC issued a tropical storm warning for Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. The system is expected to move south of the islands on Saturday as it approaches landfall on the southern coast of the Dominican Republic on Sunday.
The NHC intensity forecast continues to show gradual intensification as Fiona moves across the extreme northeastern Caribbean Sea over the next 48 hours.
Tropical storm warnings, which signify a threat within the next 36 hours, were also in effect for the Caribbean islands of Antigua, Barbuda, St. Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat, Anguilla, Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Maarten, Guadeloupe. , St. Barthelemy , Saint Martin and the British Virgin Islands.
Elsewhere in the Atlantic, a tropical wave was detected Thursday midway between the west coast of Africa and the islands of the Lesser Antilles. The weather system is producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms. It is forecast to develop slowly late this weekend and early next as it turns north over the central subtropical Atlantic.
In addition, the NHC is monitoring a frontal low over the western Atlantic Ocean hundreds of miles west-northwest of Bermuda, which emerged on Friday morning. It is expected to move east to east-southeast at 10 to 15 mph while producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms.
This system is expected to remain disorganized as upper-level winds prevent it from becoming a tropical cyclone, the NHC said, giving it only a 10% chance of forming in the next two to five days.
