Tropical Storm Humberto forms near Cape Verde Islands

Tropical Storm Humberto formed earlier today off the west coast of Africa near the Cape Verde Islands.

A Tropical Storm Warning has been issued for the southern Cape Verde Islands, as the storm is now brushing by the archipelago. 

Humberto is expected to head toward the west-northwest and then more northerly, possibly becoming a hurricane by mid-week, as it tracks across an area favorable for development, before weakening by the weekend. If it strengtens beyond a tropical storm, it will become the first Atlantic hurricane of the 2013 season.

But the storm will not threaten the Caribbean region or the United States. 

Weather Underground explains: 

With that said, thanks to the Bermuda-Azores high becoming more of an “Azores high”, coupled with a tropical upper-tropospheric trough (TUTT) nosing southwestward from the Mediterranean into the eastern Atlantic, this new tropical storm is likely to turn toward the northwest or north by mid-late week. Increasingly strong west to southwest winds expected to develop across the central Atlantic Ocean are expected to deflect this system well east of Bermuda next week. It is no threat to the Caribbean Sea or mainland U.S.

If Humberto becomes a hurricane after 8:00 a.m. Wednesday, it will be the latest first hurricane on record.

“That is really telling that tells us that the season has been a very, very quiet season,” The Weather Channel’s Carl Parker commented in a video clip today. 

Elsewhere, the National Hurricane Center is monitoring an area of disturbance associated with the remnants of Gabrielle situated about 400 miles south-southwest of Bermuda. The system has a 20% chance of becoming a tropical cyclone within the next five days, according to the center. 

The Atlantic hurricane season peaks this month, and 80 percent of named storms between 1981 and 2010 have formed between August and October, according to a report on The Weather Channel, which had previously forecasted eight hurricanes for the current season.

In fact, on average, August 10 is when the first Atlantic hurricane forms, and in the five seasons without a hurricane through August since 1960 (1967, 1984, 1988, 2001, and 2002), multiple hurricanes developed later in the season, the report states.