Tropical Storm Gaston is moving northwest in the Atlantic

A tropical wave has fizzled out north of Cuba and won’t have time to reorganize into a tropical storm or hurricane before hitting Florida, forecasters say.

There is the chance that this system holds together enough to eventually make it into the eastern Gulf near Florida.

“The problem it’s had is a combination of dry air and wind shear”.

Located east of Cuba and north to the Bahamas, the messy storm was dumping water on the region as it moved about 10 miles per hour at 8 a.m. Friday, the National Hurricane Center reported. “It’s been fortunate we don’t have something forming”.

On Thursday, a hurricane hunter plane found the storm no longer packed tropical storm force winds as it pushed through the southeastern Bahamas and still lacked a defined center. Located more than 1,100 miles east, northeast of the Leeward Islands, winds dropped to about 70 mph as the storm moved northwestward at 17 mph, forecasters reported at 11 a.m. Gaston could rekindle over the weekend but is expected to turn north and stay far the USA coast. The wave has an 80 percent chance of strengthening to a tropical storm in the next five days. However they gave the storm very little chance of becoming a tropical storm – just 10 percent – before it arrives in Texas.

Historically, almost 96 percent of major – category 3, 4 and 5 – hurricane days take place during this time period, according to NOAA.

“If it does spin up on the coast, a warning would be fast”, Feltgen said. “Things could change on short notice”.

Even though it is not clear how much southwest Georgia will be affected by this storm, there are some important items you should always have on hand during hurricane season. “There isn’t a center of circulation, so what do the models latch on to?”

Even if the system does not immediately develop, there was a good chance of heavy rain that might cause flash floods and mudslides across Haiti and the Dominican Republic and over eastern and central Cuba through the weekend, Brennan said. If no storm forms, heavy rain could still likely drench the state, with risky rip currents churning up beaches.

“Heavy rains and gusty winds could begin over the weekend and continue through early next week”, the Miami-based Hurricane Center said in an advisory issued early Friday.