By: Staff Writer
June 8, 2021
The National Hurricane Centre (NHC) in Miami, Florida is reporting a low pressure system developing in the Gulf of Mexico in the southwestern Caribbean Sea that has the potential to become a tropical storm.
The NHC said that an area of low pressure is expected to develop over the southwestern Caribbean Sea by Wednesday or Thursday. Some gradual development will be possible thereafter while the system moves slowly north-westward toward Central America.
The low is forecast to develop Wednesday or Thursday in the southwestern Caribbean near Costa Rica, the NHC said on Monday.
After the low forms, it’s expected to ride the Central American coastline north.
Regardless of how the storm develops, there is a strong chance that it will dump heavy rainfall in Central America and parts of Colombia.
The low pressure event has a 30 percent chance to develop into a storm within the next five days.
In May, the first named storm of the year took shape as Sub-Tropical Storm Ana 10 days prior to the June 1 start of the season.
In fact, the NHC began to issue regular Tropical Weather Outlooks on May 15, two weeks earlier than it did in the past. This change was implemented in light of the fact that named systems had formed in the Atlantic Ocean prior to the official start of the season in each of the preceding six seasons.
On May 19, the NHC began monitoring an area of disturbed weather northeast of Bermuda for the formation of a non-tropical low due to the potential for tropical or subtropical cyclogenesis that slowly developed into Tropical Storm Ana.
The approach of the precursor system of Ana warranted the issuance of a Tropical Storm Watch by the Bermuda Weather Service for the island of Bermuda on May 20.
No other storms have developed after Ana, so forecasters are watching this developing pressure in the Gulf of Mexico very closely.
No one wants a repeat of the devastating Hurricane Maria of 2017 that absolutely destroyed Dominica and Antigua and Barbuda, who are still in the rebuilding efforts some four years later.
In addition, people are on guard after Hurricane Dorian hit The Bahamas in 2019 that destroyed the island of Abaco, leaving billions of dollars in damage and lost revenue for the government.
Most recently, Hurricane Iota slammed into Central America in November of last year just weeks after Hurricane Eta slammed the same area. Causing for mass evacuations for people in Nicaragua, leaving over 100 dead. Effects of Eta and Iota were felt in Honduras and Guatemala.
A preliminary estimate for the damage in Nicaragua from Iota is at $564m (2020 USD). Total damage estimates for the hurricane are currently at $1.4bn (2020 USD).
Hurricane Eta and Iota combined damage on Central America topped a whopping $9bn according Aon’s monthly Global Catastrophe Recap report.