Heavy rain could be headed within days to islands in the northern Bahamas where teams are still searching for thousands of people missing since Hurricane Dorian.
It’s “not the best news for an area that’s already been hardest hit by Hurricane Dorian, with heavy rain and very strong winds,” CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam said early Thursday, referring to the Category 5 monster that less than two weeks ago slammed the archipelago nation.
The brewing storm system also may move across the Gulf of Mexico, he said, possibly impacting coastal areas from the Florida Panhandle to Texas. It comes as the Atlantic hurricane season reaches it statistical peak in the weeks surrounding September 10, a period when weather conditions favor storms forming quickly.
There’s a 70% probability that a tropical depression or a tropical storm could form by Saturday from the area of low pressure now near the Turks and Caicos, the National Hurricane Center predicted Thursday morning. It would be named Humberto if it reaches tropical-storm strength.
Nearly 4 inches of rain could fall in the next five days in Marsh Harbour, a town in the Bahamian Abacos Islands where Dorian destroyed about 1,100 buildings, some forecast models show. In Nassau, a hub of the nation’s hurricane recovery, 1.5 inches of rain could fall by early next week, the models show.
Those rain totals may be lower, with 1 to 2 inches falling across the northern Bahamas, other forecast models show. Isolated sections of the islands could see more rain, according to those predictions, which place the system’s heaviest rain impact on Florida.
“We’re still several days away from major impacts,” Van Dam said.
Meantime, a tropical wave still near Africa’s west coast could become a tropical depression by early next week, the hurricane center said. It’s many days from posing any threat to the United States or the Bahamas, Van Dam said.
