After Irene & Katia, Tropical Storm Maria Forms in Atlantic

Hurricane Irene lightened up before hitting the northern half of the Eastern Seaboard.  Hurricane Katia was originally looking to be a real threat to much of the same areas as Irene hit, but it has now changed course and is expected to spin out into North Atlantic.  September is often the heart of hurricane season and we now have Tropical Storm Maria that has formed out in the Atlantic Ocean.

The tropical storm classification is a storm with wind speeds between 39 MPH and 73 MPH.  The current path is heading to the north-eastern Caribbean and then somewhere on the Eastern Seaboard.  We do not want to hype the issue and we hope (as we noted with Katia) that it approaches land and just takes a boomerang turn to head into northern Atlantic Ocean to dissipate in the colder waters.

Maria’s current path looks as though it could be anywhere from Florida on up and we are not going to make any wild projections or claims.  The National Hurricane Center is projecting that Maria will still be a tropical storm by 8:00 AM or so with the center part of the cone path being to the east of the Bahamas after strafing that outer band of the Caribbean over the weekend.  The NHC also noted that the maximum sustained winds recorded currently are 50 MPH.

It is still a day or two too soon to rack up where the exact threat from Maria will be.  Hopefully, there won’t be any threat.

JON C. OGG

The projected cone path is below: