FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. Tropical Storm Dorian, forecast to be at or near hurricane status by Tuesday as it moves west into the Caribbean, has put Barbados under a tropical storm warning and other Caribbean islands under tropical storm watches on Sunday.
Although Dorian is on a general path toward Florida, it is far too soon to determine its impact on any part of the state.
The range of potential outcomes was still pretty wide, Senior Hurricane Specialist Jack Beven wrote in a forecast discussion posted on the National Hurricane Centers website on Sunday.
So far it was sounding like the biggest potential plot development, at least for Florida residents, was what would happen to Dorian as it crosses over Hispaniola, which is the island that includes the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
However, the large range of possibilities includes both Dorian going north of Hispaniola and remaining a hurricane and the small cyclone dissipating completely over Hispaniola, Beven wrote.
In its 2 p.m. Sunday public advisory, the hurricane center said Dorians center was about 430 miles east-southeast of Barbados with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph.
The storm was becoming a little better organized, the advisory said.
Barbados was under a tropical storm warning issued by the islands government on Sunday morning. The warning means that tropical storm conditions are expected to hit the island within 36 hours.
Meanwhile St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines were under tropical storm watches, meaning that tropical storm conditions are possible there over the next 40 hours.
Each of the islands is located in the southeastern rim of the Caribbean.
Dorian is expected to pass over the general vicinity of Barbados Monday night before moving over the area of St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, which are just west of Barbados.
Dorian is also expected to make a turn toward the west-northwest on Monday, which accounts for the so-called storm cone aiming for the general neighborhood of Florida. (This doesnt necessarily mean the storm will strike Florida or even be a cyclone by the time it reaches Florida because its too early to tell, but by the same token, a Florida impact cant be ruled out at this point either.)
Currently the National Hurricane Centers cone graphic shows Dorian strengthening to a hurricane in the eastern Caribbean Sea before weakening to tropical storm status as it travels in a northwest direction, putting parts of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and beyond that, portions of Cuba and the Bahamas, in the potential impact zone.
Elsewhere in the tropics:
A big yet disorganized cluster of storms and clouds spanning several hundred miles in the Atlantic off the U.S. Southeast had an 80% chance of becoming a depression in the next few days. However, the system was moving to the northeast into the open ocean well offshore of the southeastern United States, the hurricane center noted in a tropical weather outlook on Sunday morning.
