Tropical wave brewing....expected to become Hurricane Danny

TAMPA – Forecasters seem confident the season’s fourth named Atlantic storm could appear today.

A tropical wave about 470 miles east of the Bahamas has the potential to become a tropical depression or storm at anytime as it enters a section of ocean where high level winds and water temperatures will make things cozy for a developing storm.

A hurricane hunter aircraft has been dispatched to explore the disturbance that is developing a well-defined circulation, a sign it’s working up to a tropical cyclone.

Forecasters believe the tropical wave will skip the depression level and go straight to a tropical storm.

Intensity models run early today already have the disturbance at tropical storm strength.
Most of those models also have the storm reaching hurricane strength around Sunday, though all project it staying below Category 2 strength.

It is heading to the west-northwest at about 15 mph, the National Hurricane Center says.
None of the track models have the system threatening Florida, but folks farther north on the East Coast may need to pay attention.

The track models are fairly well clustered and generally predict the storm will pass north of the Bahamas and curve toward Bermuda, similar to the path taken by Hurricane Bill, although the model tracks take the storm closer to the United States coast than Bill.

Some of the models have the storm going near the Carolinas or Virginia, but most show it heading toward the Canadian Maritimes by the end of the weekend.

If it becomes a storm, it would be named Danny.