Tropical Storm Ernesto formed east of the Leeward Islands on Monday afternoon.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Monday the center of Tropical Storm Ernesto was located at latitude 16.0\u00b0N and longitude 57.5\u00b0W which put the center about 295 miles (475 km) east-southeast of Antigua.\u00a0 Ernesto was moving toward the west-northwest at 28 m.p.h. (44 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 40 m.p.h. (65 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 50 m.p.h. (80 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 1009 mb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Storm Warnings were in effect for Guadeloupe, St. Martin, St. Barthelemy, St, Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat, Antigua, Barbuda, Anguilla, Saba, St. Eustatius, Sint Maarten, the British Virgin Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Culebra, Vieques.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n A U.S. Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft found a distinct low level center of circulation in a tropical wave previously designated as Potential Tropical Cyclone Five, and the U.S. National Hurricane Center designated the system as Tropical Storm Ernesto.<\/p>\n More thunderstorms formed near the center of Tropical Storm Ernesto.\u00a0 Bands of showers and thunderstorms began to revolve around the center of Ernesto’s circulation.\u00a0 Storms near the center of Ernesto started to generate upper level divergence that pumped mass away from the tropical storm.<\/p>\n The reconnaissance plane also found that tropical storm force winds extended out 60 miles (95 km) in the northeastern quadrant of Tropical Storm Ernesto.\u00a0 The winds in the other parts of Ernesto’s circulation were blowing at less than tropical storm force.<\/p>\n Tropical Storm Ernesto will move through an environment somewhat favorable for intensification during the next 24 hours.\u00a0 Ernesto will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperatures are near 29\u00b0C.\u00a0 It will move under the southern part of an upper level ridge over the subtropical Atlantic Ocean.\u00a0 The ridge will produce strong easterly winds that will blow toward the top of the tropical wave.\u00a0 Those winds will cause moderate vertical wind shear.\u00a0 The wind shear will inhibit intensification, but the shear is not enough to stop intensification. Tropical Storm Ernesto is likely to intensify gradually during the next 24 hours.<\/p>\n Tropical Storm Ernesto will move around the southern side of a subtropical high pressure system over the Atlantic Ocean.\u00a0 The high pressure system will steer the tropical wave quickly toward the west-northwest during the next 24 hours.\u00a0 On its anticipated track, ‘Tropical Storm Ernesto could reach the Leeward Islands early on Tuesday.\u00a0 Ernesto could be near Puerto Rico on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n Tropical Storm Ernesto will bring gusty winds and locally heavy rain to the Leeward Islands, the British Virgin Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.\u00a0 Heavy rain is likely to cause flash floods in some locations.\u00a0 The winds could be strong enough to cause localized outages of electricity.\u00a0 Ernesto could also cause a storm surge of up to 4 feet (1 meter).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tropical Storm Ernesto formed east of the Leeward Islands on Monday afternoon.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Monday the center of Tropical Storm Ernesto was located at latitude 16.0\u00b0N and longitude 57.5\u00b0W which put the center about 295 miles (475 km) east-southeast of Antigua.\u00a0 Ernesto was moving toward the west-northwest at 28 m.p.h. (44 km\/h).\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[446,447,1689,1248,1690,829,1619,1154,1072,140,1249,1252,22,1075,3675,1074,1076,1251,1073,1164,804,1620],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20814"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20814"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20815,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20814\/revisions\/20815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}