Tropical Storm Chantal Forms East of Windward Islands
Posted on July 7, 2013
Tropical Storm Chantal has formed about 1000 miles east of the Windward Islands. This is the third named storm of the 2013 Atlantic Hurricane season. The newly formed storm has been moving quickly westward at about 25 miles per hour.
Sometimes storms moving this have difficulty forming or strengthening, but Chantal has managed to build convection and organize. For a storm to form this far east so early is also rare. Dr. Jeff Masters writes in a blog post that "there have been only 20 July tropical depressions that have formed east of the Lesser Antilles since 1851, an average of one tropical cyclone every eight years."
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) has started issuing advisories on Tropical Storm Chantal. Chantal has a minimum pressure of 1008 mb and maximum sustained winds of 40 mph. A tropical storm warning has been issued for Barbados, Dominica and Saint Lucia. A tropical storm watch is in effect for Saint Vincent.
It is still very early to determine exactly where Chantal will go and how strong Chantal will get. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) is currently forecasting Chantal to stay south of Puerto Rico and then start pulling northwest and north somewhere between Haiti and eastern Cuba. This would put Chantal in the Bahamas as early as Friday. Land interaction can disrupt a tropical storm or hurricane and there are multiple opportunities for Chantal to interact with land in the NHC's forecast cone. You can view a larger version of the NHC's forecast cone here.
Be sure to check the National Hurricane Center for the latest advisory.