A tropical storm brewing off the coast of the Windward Islands in the Atlantic is likely to become a full-fledged hurricane by mid-week.
The storm, named Dorian, threatens to hit the Windward islands by tonight as a tropical storm, bringing heavy rain, high sea levels, and high wind speeds.
At the time of this writing, Dorian is centered roughly 200 miles east of Barbados and is moving westward at a pace of around 15 mph. The storm is relatively small, though that doesn’t mean it isn’t powerful: it could deposit as much as six inches of rainfall on some of the Caribbean islands it’s expected to hit over the course of the week.
Due to the system’s small size, both its movement and its impact can be hard to predict. When it makes landfall at the Windward Islands later today, the wind impact will vary greatly depending on elevation. At very high elevations, it’s more likely that the gusts are more powerful.
Today there are tropical storm warnings in effect for Barbados, St. Lucia and St. Vincent, as well as the Grenadines, which means tropical storm conditions are expected there in the next 36 hours.
When a storm system is as small and condensed as Dorian, it can be very hard to tell where it will go next. However, the storm’s current projected path will have it sweep up the Caribbean and hit Western Puerto Rico, most of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and Eastern Cuba before sweeping over the Lower Antilles.
At present, it appears that the storm will be a hurricane by the time it hits Hispaniola and Puerto Rico.
The water ahead of the storm is quite warm, which could mean that the storm will become more intense as it moves along. Thankfully, relatively dry air and high amounts of wind shear could help to peel thunderstorms off of the system and lessen the impact on some of the islands in the projected path.
Also, remember that it is very difficult to forecast what will happen with such a small storm system, and its projected path could change dramatically throughout the week.
