While Harvey Threatens Texas, East Coast Needs to Monitor 92L

The big story in the Atlantic Tropics is Tropical Storm Harvey, which has been rapidly deepening, and is likely to become a major hurricane prior to landfall. Harvey, which still only has winds of 65 miles per hour, but has a pressure of 982 millibars, and that represents a drop of 20 millibars within the past 10 hours. There is also another problem worth watching in the Atlantic.

Earlier this morning, the National Hurricane Center in Miami Florida issued a Tropical Weather Outlook that indicates a disturbance located in the area of Southwestern Florida and the Florida Straits is producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms over a vast area that includes South Florida and the Bahamas. Right now, the NHC indicates that this area of disturbed weather has a 10 percent chance of development over the next 48 hours, and a 30 percent chance of development over the next 5 days.

Last night, Larry Cosgrove of Weather America indicated that Invest 92L was beginning to coalesce and had a fair chance of becoming a named storm with the potential of moving up the East Coast. So while many are going to be paying attention to Harvey, and rightfully so, others, particularly along the East Coast of the United States from Florida to the Mid-Atlantic should keep a close eye on Invest 92L.

Right now, the big problem with Invest 92L is the significant rainfall that it is producing across South Florida and the Bahamas. Wayne Neely, forecast at the Department of Meteorology in the Bahamas, cautions residents in the Northwestern Bahamas including Grand Bahama, Abaco, Andros, Eleuthera, New Providence, Bimini, and the Berry Islands that there will be about 2 to 3 days of unsettled weather with Thursday and Friday showing the greatest potential for rainfall and even waterspouts.

The path of Invest 92L is likely to parallel the East Coast of the United States from Florida to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and then gradually move away from land as it heads up toward the Mid-Atlantic and New England, but there are some indications that the disturbance, which could become tropical or subtropical, could turn back toward the coast near the Canadian Maritimes. Residents along the East Coast should monitor the progress of this disturbance.