For the latest information on storm activity in the Cayman Islands, as well as information on how to prepare for hurricane season, visit Storm Centre.
Tropical depression 15 formed the central Atlantic Ocean Friday morning and weather forecasters are predicting the system to become a major hurricane early next week.
The storm poses no threat to the Cayman Islands.
However, based on current tracking from the US National Hurricane Center in Miami, the storm looks likely to impact sister British overseas territory Bermuda as a major hurricane.
Bermuda is still feeling the tropical-storm effects of Hurricane Lee, which brushed past it overnight on its way to the New England and Atlantic Canada expected through Saturday.
The depression is expected to become a storm later on Friday and will be 12th named storm of the season. Nigel is next on the Atlantic hurricane season list of names.
The NHC, in a Friday morning advisory, said the centre of Tropical Depression Fifteen
was located 1,170 miles east of the Lesser Antilles.
The depression is moving toward the northwest near 12 miles per hour and this general motion is expected to continue for the next few days.
“Maximum sustained winds are near 35 mph (55 km/h) with higher gusts. Gradual strengthening is forecast, and the depression is expected to become a tropical storm late [Friday] and could become a hurricane late this weekend,” the NHC advisory said.
Forecasters say that the depression is forecast to gradually intensify over the next couple of days as “moderate northeasterly shear and the initial broad cyclone structure could provide a check on the intensification rate”.
Meanwhile forecasters are keeping watch over a tropical wave that will be moving off the west coast of Africa by the middle of next week.
Though presently at a low 20% chance of formation over the next seven days, forecasters say some gradual development of this system is possible after the wave moves off the coast and heads westward across the eastern tropical Atlantic.
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