Hurricane Tammy was downgraded to a strong post-tropical cyclone early Thursday, although it could once again become a tropical system in the coming days.
The remnants of Tammy are forecast to bring wind gusts and heavy rain to Bermuda for the next few days, the National Hurricane Center said Thursday night. Swells could affect the northern Leeward Islands, the British and U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Bermuda.
The storm will be meandering in the northwest Atlantic to the east of Bermuda through Saturday and the environmental conditions are expected to become more favorable for it to regain tropical characteristics, the hurricane center said. Its odds of re-developing were at 50% in the next two to seven days as of 8 p.m. Thursday.
Tammy made landfall on Barbuda on Oct. 21, then lashed the Leeward Islands. The hurricane swiped the far eastern Caribbean two weeks after Tropical Storm Phillippe dumped 6 to 8 inches of rain over Antigua and Barbuda and knocked out electricity there, according to the Associated Press.
Forecasters are watching a second area in the Atlantic for potential tropical development as of Thursday night, in the western Caribbean Sea. A broad area of low pressure is expected to form there in the coming days, and it could slowly develop early next week while moving north.
As of 8 p.m., it has a 20% chance of developing in the next seven days, the National Hurricane Center said.
So far this season in the Atlantic, there have been 19 named storms, seven of which were hurricanes. Of those, three were major hurricanes, meaning Category 3 or above.
Those were Hurricane Lee, a rare Category 5; Hurricane Franklin, a Category 4; and Hurricane Idalia, which made landfall on Florida’s Big Bend region at Category 3 strength on Aug. 30.
The remaining storm names for 2023 are Vince and Whitney. If all those names end up being used this season, the National Hurricane Center would turn to the supplemental list of names from the World Meteorological Association. In previous years, the Greek alphabet was used for additional storm names — which had only happened twice before — during the record-shattering hurricane seasons in 2005 and 2020.
Hurricane season officially runs through Nov. 30.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
