Busy Tropics
8:50 p.m. Wednesday, September 3, 2008
The 2008 Hurricane season has been busy, with Gustav and Fay causing destruction and death in the Caribbean and the U.S. And tropical systems are lined up, one after another, as far away as East Africa. Most of the tropical activity this year has been in the Gulf of Mexico. But now that the Atlantic has warmed up, and winds high up have become favorable, many tropical systems are forming.
First on the list is Tropical Storm Hanna. The storm is expected to snag the coastline of the Carolinas this weekend. Hanna will be a heavy rain maker for much of the East Coast.
We're even more worried about Hurricane Ike. The storm could become a very dangerous hurricane by the end of the weekend, because of very warm Atlantic waters and decreasing winds high up. Early forecasts show Ike may hit Florida by early next week, only to threaten the Gulf of Mexico again by later next week.
There are even more storms after Ike to worry about. Josephine lurks just behind Ike, with another wave after that, and other potential tropical systems after that, and on and on.
A packed line up like this is not unheard of for this time of year, the peak of hurricane season, and a good thing about the line up is that if one of the storms gets really big, it will churn up the ocean and keep other storms from getting too strong.
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