After much anticipation over the past several days, Tropical Storm Fiona emerged in the Western Atlantic yesterday several hundred miles from the Northern Leeward Islands. Moving very rapidly to the West at 23 miles per hour, Fiona is not exepcted to become a strong storm or hurricane in the short term. Due to its close proximity to dangerous Hurricane Earl, the sixth named storm of the 2010 Atlantic Hurricane Season isn’t given much of a chance to develop.

As of the 2:00 AM EDT Advisory from the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida, Tropical Storm Fiona was located 670 miles east of the Leeward Islands. Maximum sustained winds were still of minimal tropical storm force at 40 miles per hour. Minimum central pressure in the storm remains high at 1007 millibars, or 29.74 inches of Hg. The combination of its very rapid forward motion along with its close proximity to Earl will make it difficult for Fiona to develop much further. The shearing environment created by the flow from Earl along with the fast movement will prevent the thunderstorms associated with the system from converging over its center, which it needs to do to get better organized and stronger.

The latest forecast discussion also adds that the upwelled water left behind from the churning by Earl along a similar track will leave sea surface temperatures slightly cooler for Fiona adding another obstacle to development. Maximum sustained winds are only expected to become 45 knots or 50 miles per hour within the next five days. As far as the forecast track, Fiona is expected to follow a path similar to that of Earl, and maybe a bit more to the right. One model, the ECMWF, has a stronger and deeper Fiona responding to Northeasterly winds, but that scenario isn’t expected.

After coming off the coast of Africa late last week, Fiona gradually got picked up by the NHC, and was getting a high probability to develop over the past several days. However, it still didn’t develop. On Monday afternoon, the probability for tropical formation increased to 90 percent before it finally became a storm by later afternoon.