Tropical Storm Lisa – the 12th named storm in a late-blooming Atlantic hurricane season – formed Monday morning about 175 miles south of Kingston, Jamaica, in the western Caribbean.
Though only modest strengthening has occurred since, Lisa is forecast to gather steam as it nears the warm waters around Central America today and tomorrow, with NHC calling for a Category 1 hurricane prior to landfall in Belize by late Wednesday.
Recommended Videos
The forecast ahead is straightforward.
Clockwise steering around high pressure to the north will keep Lisa on a westward path over the next few days, guiding the core of the storm just north of the northern coast of Honduras and into Belize and Guatemala by late tomorrow into Thursday, where it’s expected to quickly unravel over the rugged terrain of southern Mexico.
In addition to strong winds, especially north of Lisa’s circulation, the storm is expected to bring up to 5 feet of storm surge to the coast of Belize and as much as 8 inches of locally heavy rainfall to parts of Central America over the next day or two.
Otherwise in the Atlantic, the area of low pressure we’d been following near Bermuda late last week and over the weekend is trying to stage a late comeback over the open north Atlantic.
Showers and thunderstorms blossomed overnight atop the wintertime low pressure system, thanks in part to unseasonably warm waters in the area, allowing it to gradually acquire tropical characteristics.
The NHC issued a special outlook for the system – now designated Invest 96L – early this morning and it’ll likely become a short-lived tropical or subtropical storm before getting wrapped into a much larger extratropical storm system later this week.
The system poses no threat to land.
