Atlantic Hurricane Season kicks-off by Sean Batty
The 1st of June is the official starting date of the Atlantic Hurricane Season, and to mark the occasion, a tropical storm started spinning in the Gulf of Mexico.
On Saturday morning Tropical Storm Barry was sitting just over 150 miles west of Key West, Florida. Barry’s sustained winds at this time were around 50mph, with higher gusts.
The storm is due to weaken gradually but is set to travel across Florida and then up the eastern seaboard over the coming days. Despite weakening in strength it could still bring 76mm to 152mm (3 to 6 inches) of rain to parts of the Sunshine State, Florida, to Georgia and the Carolinas.
Even though it was the first day of the season on Friday, Barry is the second storm to form, with Subtropical Storm Andrea forming back on May 9th. Andrea was the first named storm to occur in May since 1981.
While one ‘B’ storm was ready to hit Florida, another ‘B’ was heading for Mexico, with Tropical Storm Barbara, the second named storm of the Eastern Pacific Hurricane season expected to make landfall today.
Barbara will come ashore close to the Mexico-Guatemala border, an area notorious for its vulnerability to flooding.
The storm has sustained winds of around 50mph and could bring more rain than Barry, as much as 508mm (20 inches) in places, and officials have warned of potentially deadly floods and landslides.
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