NU Online News Service, Aug. 6, 1:39 p.m. EDT
As the hurricane season enters its most active period, the fifth and sixth named storms of this season appear to be no threat to the U.S. coast, say forecasters.
Tropical Storm Ernesto, which formed on Wednesday, is churning through the Caribbean and is forecast to make landfall over Belize early Wednesday, says catastrophe modeler RMS.
Beyond that, the storm is to track over the Gulf of Mexico and make a second landfall over the state of Veracruz, Mexico, as a tropical storm.
Neither the U.S. coast nor offshore oil platforms are threatened by the storm, says RMS. No damage or flooding has been reported from the Caribbean islands impacted by Ernesto, RMS adds.
AIR Worldwide says that the storm has increased in intensity and the storm could hit the Belize and Mexico border as a Category 1 hurricane (sustained winds between 74-95 mph on the Saffir-Simpson scale) in the next 36 to 48 hours. The is a chance that the storm could be upgraded to a Category 2 storm (sustained winds between 96-110 mph)
Florence became the sixth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season Saturday morning and began losing strength by the next morning. The Hurricane center issued its last advisory on the storm this morning.
On Friday, the Colorado State University Tropical Meteorology team of Phil Klotzbach and William Gray issued their updated forecast for the season adding one more storm for a total of 14 for the season.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is scheduled to release its updated forecast later this week.
Forecasters are still calling this a below-average season, but some point out that even in a below average season, it takes only one significant hurricane to make landfall and do damage.
This story was updated at 3:50 p.m. EDT with information from AIR Worldwide.
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