Watching Fred, Grace, and a third tropical disturbance

As of 8:40 a.m. Sunday, Fred has been upgraded to a Tropical Storm with 40 mph maximum sustained winds and is moving to the NNW at 9 mph.

Fred is expected to stay well offshore of SW Florida, but will make landfall in the Florida panhandle tomorrow night.

We are expecting the remnants of Fred to still bring gusty rain bands to SW Florida today. Due to the potentially heavy rainfall we could also see localized flooding along with an isolated tornado.

A flood watch was issued for Southwest Florida until Sunday at 8:00 p.m.

TROPICAL STORM GRACE

Tropical Storm Grace formed east of the Leeward Islands yesterday and is now moving south of Puerto Rico this morning. As of 8 a.m., Grace packs winds of 40 mph and is moving to the WNW at 16 mph.

Grace will bring tropical storm conditions to the Antilles this weekend as it moves westward. Just as with Fred, Grace may have to deal with the mountainous terrain of Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Cuba. Interaction with these islands could significantly weaken or even cause Grace to dissipate, along with center reformations.

While parts of SW Florida are in the cone for Grace with impacts possible midweek, there is significant uncertainty in the forecast due to land interaction with the Greater Antilles. For now, we just need to watch Grace and the best thing to do is to go over your hurricane plan in case you need to take action.

The National Hurricane Center has now added a third area in the tropics to watch! It has been labeled Invest 96L, and has a 30% of development over the next 5 days. The next name is Henri.

LOCAL FORECAST

Otherwise, Sunday isn’t looking so great weather-wise thanks to Fred. Expect gusty tropical squalls to pinwheel their way across SW Florida today as Fred passes to our west. The only good thing is the extra cloud cover will keep our highs in the mid to upper 80s.

Our weather will quickly turn back to normal on Monday, before Grace potentially influences our weather on Wednesday.