Hurricane Tammy churns in Atlantic as weaker storm falls apart near Nicaragua
ORLANDO, Fla. — Hurricane Tammy has moved into the open Atlantic while newly formed Tropical Depression Twenty-One fell apart as it moved ashore into Central America on Tuesday.
As of 5 p.m., the center of Tammy was located about 565 miles south-southeast of Bermuda moving northeast at 8 mph with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph.
“This general motion is expected to continue through Wednesday. A turn toward the north at a slower forward speed is forecast to begin on Thursday,” forecasters said. “Slight strengthening is possible during the next day or two. Weakening is expected after that. Tammy is forecast to become apost-tropical cyclone on Thursday.”
Its five-day track has it venturing back toward Bermuda, but after turning post-tropical. For now its hurricane-force winds extend out 25 miles and tropical-storm-force winds extend out 175 miles.
The system that made landfall on the island of Barbuda on Sunday is continuing to leave behind swells affecting the Caribbean’s northern Leeward Islands, British and U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. With it comes heavy surf and rip current conditions.
Elsewhere, the 2023 hurricane season saw the development of its 21st official system with the formation of a new tropical depression in the far southwestern Caribbean Sea on Monday.
As of 11 a.m. Tuesday, though, Tropical Depression Twenty-One had become just remnants located about 130 miles north-northwest of Bluefields, Nicaragua, moving west-northwest at 3 mph with maximum sustained winds of 25 mph.
Rainfall could still be as high as 12 inches in some areas of Nicaragua and as high as 6 inches across southern and eastern Honduras. The rains could bring flash and urban flooding and a risk of mudslides in areas of higher terrain, the NHC said.
TD 21 became the season’s first tropical depression to not intensify into a named tropical storm. 2023 had an unnamed subtropical storm in January, and then after the official season started June 30 has served up 19 named storms including seven hurricanes.
Only Vince and Whitney remain on the initial 21-letter list from the World Meteorological Organization, which skips the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z.
The hurricane season ends Nov. 30, although any system that forms before the end of the December would be considered part of the 2023 hurricane season. If the tropics churn out enough named storms, they would pull names from a supplemental list from the WMO beginning with Adria.
Only 2005 and 2020 had to venture beyond the initial 21 names, although both of those years relied on the Greek alphabet for supplemental names, some thing that the WMO shifted away from citing potential confusion among similarly named systems like Eta and Beta.
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