A tropical depression or potentially Tropical Storm Tammy “likely to form” in the next few days from a system expected to move toward the central tropical Atlantic, National Hurricane Center forecasters said Sunday.
That system, which emerged off Africa on Wednesday has a 60% chance to develop in the next two days and a 90% chance in the next seven days, according to the center’s 8 a.m. advisory.
Meanwhile, the former Tropical Storm Sean was once again a tropical depression, which was expected to fade to a remnant low Sunday. Sean, located in the central tropical Atlantic, is forecast to dissipate late Monday.
So far this season in the Atlantic, there have been 18 named storms, six of which were hurricanes. Of those, three were major hurricanes, meaning Category 3 or above.
Those were Hurricane Lee, a rare Category 5; Hurricane Franklin, a Category 4; and Hurricane Idalia, which made landfall on Florida’s Big Bend region at Category 3 strength on Aug. 30.
After Tammy, the remaining storm names for 2023 are Vince and Whitney. If all those names end up being used this season, the National Hurricane Center would turn to the Greek alphabet for additional storm names — starting with Alpha, Beta and Gamma. This has only ever happened twice before — during the record-shattering hurricane seasons in 2020 and 2005.
Hurricane season officially runs through Nov. 30.