Well, it took a while, but 93 finally reached tropical storm status last night. With top winds around 50 mph, Bertha is now moving over the Lesser Antilles. A bit more intensification is possible over the next 24 hours, with forecasts ranging between 40-65 mph hour during its passage over Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic tomorrow. The high mountains of Puerto Rico that are famous for disrupting tropical cyclones ( and probably lots of other neat stuff…) may batter Bertha a bit as the system passes over those areas.
The models are still holding with a track that brings Bertha close to a trough of low pressure off the East Coast, that should ultimately re-curve the system out to sea.
The appearance of Bertha is in line with the historical date for the second named storm formation, which is August 1st. This is based upon climatological records from 1966 – 2009. If history holds, we should see our third named storm by August 13th. We looked into our Cristobal ( you knew that was coming! ), but it’s pretty foggy, so we can’t make a prediction just yet…
