The National Hurricane Center’s 1100 p.m. advisory has Tropical Siorm Isaias about 155 miles (250 kilometers south of Ponce, Puerto Rico and 255 miles (350 kilometers southeast of Santo Domingo, The Dominican Republic. Isaias has maximum sustained winds of 50 mph (85 kph) with higher gusts. Its present movement is toward the west-northwest at 20 mph (31 kph). The minimum central pressure is 1004 MB (29.65 inches).
A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for Puerto Rico, Vieques, Culebra, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands, St. Martin and St. Barthelemy Saba and St. Eustatius, St. Maarten, the Dominican Republic entire southern and northern coastlines, and the North coast of Haiti from Le Mole St Nicholas eastward to the northern border with the Dominican Republic.
Tropical Storm #Isaias will bring gusty winds and heavy rain to parts of the Caribbean before approaching the Southeast Coast this weekend.
Forecast: pic.twitter.com/BljBuV2ikt
— The Weather Channel (@weatherchannel) July 30, 2020
Isaias retains its west-northwestward to northwestward movement with some decrease in its forward speed. On the forecast track, the center of Isaias will move over Hispaniola on Thursday and near the Southeastern Bahamas by early Friday. Isaias has now become the earliest storm to begin with the letter “I” on record. The previous record was set August 7, 2005, part of the busiest Atlantic Hurricane season to date.
“This is still an unorganized storm system, and is struggling to get its organization going. Weak systems like this are horridly difficult to forecast, because they’re hardly anything for the models to latch onto. So you really, really need to take this cone with a grain of salt. The official path, which looks not so good for Florida, shows the overall motion, but the long range forecast has many many impacts on it. Forward speed, intensity, time to develop, etc all play in,” First Alert meteorologist Eric Burris said.
Bands of heavy rain and squalls continue to rotate through the northern Leeward Islands, Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico and are beginning to arrive in the Dominican Republic. At times, these bands are producing wind gusts above 40 mph.
Tropical Storm Isaias forms in Atlantic; the earliest “I-named” storm in a record-setting hurricane season –> July 30, 2020
As far as Florida goes, the NHC is showing a possible projected path for the storm that would takeIsaias near or on either side of the Florida Peninsula by this weekend, then gradually moving northeastward. This is not definite yet.
This system is still in the formative state and there will still be transient centers of circulation that may hop around over the next day or so. Eventually, one cluster of thunderstorms may begin to take over in this very large storm. Where exactly that occurs is uncertain, and could cause a shift to the position, and, hence, the forecast path of this system, according to Weather.com.
Bottom line? It is just too early to precisely determine this system’s future track and intensity, especially with regard to the mainland U.S. However, we will begin to learn more as the storm strengthens.
