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Community Corner

Lots of Storms as Tropics Enter Busiest Part of Season

This hurricane season has produced a large crop of storms so far, but they've kept their distance from Florida.

By Monday, the 2011 hurricane season’s seventh storm should be whirling in the Atlantic Ocean even as forecasters watch another tropical wave that shows some potential to become storm No. 8.

The National Hurricane Center just finished writing off the short-lived Tropical Storm Franklin that became a storm and vanished over the course of the weekend.

Now, they’re watching the season’s seventh tropical depression southeast of Bermuda that forecasters expect to become a storm as early as Monday, though it’s not forecast to become a hurricane.

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The depression or storm isn’t expected to bother many people, but Bermuda could get tropical storm-strength winds. The hurricane center expects it to move to the northeast once it finishes a few jogs closer to the mainland.

Behind the depression is another tropical wave forecasters are watching that’s north of the Leeward Islands and the Caribbean Sea.

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The tropical wave could become the eighth storm if it survives the next few days, but again, few of the intensity computer models predict it reaching hurricane strength.

It’s close enough to the tropical depression to inhibit its growth, forecasters said.

The wave should move roughly to the west but most of the forecast track models show it again curving off to the northeast and bothering only fish.

While 2011 has produced a large batch of storms for six weeks into the season, all have remained puny and haven’t reached the United States mainland.

This is the fastest start to hurricane season since 2008 when there also were six named storms by Aug. 15. But two of those six storms in 2008 were hurricanes.

Most of the Atlantic storms this year have curved around the western edge of high pressure over the ocean before they could come close to land.

This week starts what hurricane experts in Miami say is the peak of the storm season as ocean temperatures hit their simmering point and winds that inhibited growth early in the season diminish. It lasts roughly through September.

For us, the hurricane season remains distant and leaves us with more days like we’ve seen this summer, hot and a fair chance for thunderstorms in the afternoon and evenings.

There is a chance that winds will be more from the west on Monday and Tuesday and that could mean an earlier start to the rain if storms drift from the Gulf of Mexico.

The westerly winds would come from a weak cool front trying to reach Florida. National Weather Service forecasters expect it to crumble as it crosses the state and, it may not have much effect at all.

Another cool front will try to get here later in the week, but forecasters don’t expect it to do much to our weather, either.

They certainly wouldn’t bring any cooler temperatures as the heat index each day is expected to be about 105 degrees.

Thunderstorms are a possibility each day in the 30 percent to 40 percent range, and any storm could produce some strong winds or damaging weather.

Storms on Saturday and Sunday produced waterspouts off shore of Sarasota and Pinellas counties and a gust of 60 mph in Sumter County.

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