The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season continues to be active as the calendar flips to October, which is traditionally Florida’s busiest month for hurricanes.
Although the only named storm out there is distant (and strengthening) Hurricane Kirk, the National Hurricane Center is also monitoring two other tropical disturbances, including one in the Caribbean Sea.
And it’s that developing system that most concerns folks in the U.S., as it could become a named storm in the Gulf of Mexico by next week, forecasters said.
The storm activity comes on the heels of the deadly and devastating Hurricane Helene, which made landfall last week in Florida and dumped heavy, flooding rains across the Appalachians. More than 1 million were still without power Tuesday afternoon.
Although Hurricane Kirk is the only named storm now spinning far out in the Atlantic Ocean, forecasters continue to watch a disturbance closer to home in the Caribbean Sea for possible development next week.
Hurricane Kirk is “strengthening and forecast to grow larger,” the National Hurricane Center said Wednesday. However, all current forecast models show the system curving north and into the middle of the Atlantic, well away from the U.S. coast.
The hurricane center said Wednesday morning Kirk was located about 1,200 miles west of the Cabo Verde Islands with maximum sustained winds near 80 mph, with higher gusts, and is expected to move northwestward for the next few days.
“Additional strengthening is forecast during the next few days, and Kirk is expected to become a major hurricane by Thursday,” the NHC said in an advisory Wednesday morning.
Although Kirk will be turning north and staying over the open Atlantic, long-period swells from the large hurricane could reach the U.S. Eastern Seaboard – from the Mid-Atlantic into coastal areas of the Northeast – by early to middle of next week, meteorologist Michael Lowry, a hurricane specialist in Miami, told USA TODAY on Tuesday, October 2.
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