As Hurricane Helene continues on a path to make landfall in Florida’s Big Bend as a catastrophic major hurricane, Tropical Storm Isaac formed late Wednesday night over the open waters of the Atlantic.
As of 11 p.m. Wednesday, Isaac was 690 miles east-northeast of Bermuda with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph, moving east at 12 mph. Tropical-storm-force winds extend up to 220 miles from the storm’s center.
It is expected to continue moving east-northeast in the next several days, forecasters said. Maximum sustained wind speeds could reach up to 70 mph by Friday night, just shy of the 74 mph winds required to be classified a Category 1 hurricane.
Swells from Isaac are affecting parts of Bermuda’s coast and could reach the Azores by the weekend, likely causing life-threatening surf and rip currents, according to the hurricane center.
Separately, forecasters are also monitoring a disturbance that is likely to become a tropical depression in the next few days in the eastern Atlantic several hundred miles west off the coast of Africa. As of 11 p.m. Wednesday, it had an 80% chance of forming in the next seven days and a 70% chance in the next two days.
The next named storm will be Joyce.