Tropical Storm Gaston getting stronger in the Atlantic

Forecasters expect the system to strengthen and possibly become a tropical storm Monday night or Tuesday.

Cape Verde storms form far in the eastern Atlantic, from tropical waves coming off equatorial Africa and are so named due to their proximity to Cape Verde, on the west coast of Africa. It is moving west-northwest at 21 miles per hour.

The heart of hurricane season is here, and the tropics are certainly alive.

Gaston will move west-northwest over the open waters of the Atlantic.

We’ve been talking about Fiona the last couple days which was a tropical storm at its peak, then weakened to a tropical depression, and is now just a remnant area of low pressure.

As of 11:00 a.m. AST, Gaston was located approximately 685 miles west of the southernmost Cabo Verde Islands, near latitude 13.8 north, longitude 34.6 west. It was moving west-northwest at 13 miles per hour.

The National Hurricane Center also is watching a tropical wave that is producing a large area of disorganized showers and thunderstorms located east of the Leeward Islands.

AccuWeather senior meteorologist Alex Sosnowski reports that indications are that Gaston will continue to travel over the central Atlantic in a path similar to Tropical Storm Fiona, posing no immediate threat to land over the coming days. Forecasters give odds of 70 percent that 12 to 17 named storms will form this year with five to eight strengthening into a hurricane.

However, if Invest 99L manages to overcome these odds, dodge most of the Caribbean and become tropical storm Hermine, Florida will be on high alert for an incoming tropical storm or hurricane.

The last hurricane to make landfall in the Sunshine State was Wilma on October 24, 2005, which killed six people and caused $20 billion in damage across South Florida. The season is from June 1 to November 30, but most of the activity happens from mid-August to mid-October, Feltgen said.