Tropical Storm Rafael is chugging toward the Cayman Islands and is forecast to strengthen into a hurricane en route to Cuba.
On Sunday, the National Hurricane Center initiated advisories on Potential Tropical Cyclone Eighteen, a tropical disturbance in the southwestern Caribbean forecast to develop into a named storm in the coming hours, possibly reaching hurricane status before impacting western Cuba by Wednesday.
Forecasters say Tropical Storm Rafael has formed in the Caribbean and will bring heavy rain to Jamaica and the Cayman Islands before strengthening to a hurricane and likely hitting Cuba.
A hurricane watch for the Cayman Islands and a tropical storm warning for Jamaica have been issued as a weather system in the Caribbean is expected to strengthen.
The next storm in the Atlantic is likely to spin up over the weekend or early next week out of the Central American Gyre, or CAG, the semi-permanent, sprawling area of spin that straddles the land areas separating the eastern Pacific and the Caribbean Sea on the Atlantic side -- the same feature responsible for so many of our devastating hurricanes in 2024 -- including the likes of Milton and Helene.
As we first detailed in this newsletter last Thursday, a tropical depression or named storm could come together by this weekend or early next week as it meanders around in the central and western Caribbean.
Overnight computer models waffled on the outlook for a disturbance we’ve been following in the southwestern and central Caribbean, softening its development prospects and pushing back the development window into early next week.
We continue to follow the progress of a broad area of low pressure over the southwestern Caribbean that could consolidate into a tropical depression or named storm later this week as it drifts northward toward the central Caribbean.
As we detailed a week ago in this newsletter, the Caribbean is expected to make another run at tropical development later this week or into the weekend as we turn the calendar to November.
After a banner start to October that included 3 simultaneous hurricanes (Kirk, Leslie, and Milton) during its first week – a first in our record books for the month of October – with more activity packed into one month than we see in some Augusts and Septembers (traditionally our busiest months) combined, including the strongest hurricane in almost two decades (Milton), a devastating Florida hurricane hit and a surprise hurricane (Oscar) – the smallest we’ve ever measured – last weekend, the tropics are finally simmering down to end the month.
Since official Atlantic tropical cyclone recordkeeping began some 174 years ago, nearly 600 tropical storms or hurricanes have struck the mainland U.S. shoreline during all months of the year, except for January, March, April and December. Of those landfalling storms, only about a dozen struck during the month of November.
After taking a slow, horseshoe-shaped dip across eastern Cuba over the past 36 hours and dumping over a foot of heavy rain – causing pockets of significant flooding – poorly-organized Oscar is picking up the pace and accelerating through the southeastern Bahamas and toward the western Atlantic.
It’s not often we see a colossal failure in hurricane forecasting, but over the weekend the sudden formation of Hurricane Oscar on Saturday near the Turks and Caicos off the southeastern Bahamas was a reminder why we watch every system carefully, especially those close to land during the peak months of the hurricane season.
Two disturbances we’ve been tracking this week – one in the western Caribbean and the other passing just north of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands today – will bring the threat of heavy rainfall to Central America and the Greater Antilles but neither will be a concern for the mainland U.S.