Tropical Storm Florence forms in Atlantic

By Tom Brown

MIAMI (Reuters) – The sixth tropical storm of the Atlantic
hurricane season, Florence, formed in the distant Atlantic on
Tuesday and could become a hurricane as it moves toward the
United States, U.S. forecasters said.

Tropical Storm Florence was about 935 miles east of the
Lesser Antilles by 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) and moving west at 12
mph (19 kph), the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said.

Long-range computer tracking models projected that the
swirling mass of thunderstorms could end up as a hurricane
north of the Caribbean islands by 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT) on
Friday, the hurricane center said.

The weather system was still too far away to predict with
accuracy, but on its current track Florence did not appear to
pose any threat to key U.S. oil and gas facilities in the Gulf
of Mexico.

Tropical storms become hurricanes when their maximum
sustained winds hit 74 mph (119 kph). Florence’s top sustained
winds were near 40 mph (64 kph) as of late Tuesday morning.

The hurricane center said some slow strengthening was
forecast during the next 24 hours.

The six-month hurricane season, which began on June 1, has
only seen one hurricane so far — and that one only briefly.

Tropical Storm Ernesto reached hurricane strength near
Haiti late last month and then made landfall twice in the
United States as a tropical storm, first in Florida, where it
was barely noticeable, and then on the mid-Atlantic coast,
where it poured torrential rain on several states.

The 2005 season broke all records with 28 tropical storms,
of which 15 became hurricanes, including Hurricane Katrina.
Katrina devastated New Orleans just over a year ago, killing
1,500 people along the U.S. Gulf Coast and causing $80 billion
in damages.

Hurricane forecasters originally predicted the 2006
hurricane season would be busier than average.

Many have since cut their predictions, citing large amounts
of west African dust over the Atlantic and early signs of an El
Nino in the Pacific. The El Nino weather phenomenon leads to an
unusual warming of Pacific waters but curtails hurricane
formation in the Atlantic.