08.21.10
Tropical Depression 6
Last night I posted on a tropical disturbance off the Cape Verde Islands that had the potential to become a hurricane within a few days.
Within the last hour, this system has become organized enough for the National Hurricane Center to upgrade it to Tropical Depression 6 (TD6). The above map shows the NHC forecast track. They have it becoming Tropical Storm Danielle sometime tonight, and a hurricane by Monday afternoon.
The NHC discussion on TD6 mentions “the NHC forecast is close to the SHIPS/LGEM models…showing a large powerful hurricane over the central Atlantic Ocean in a few days.”
Here’s a model intensity forecast for TD6 from Weather Underground, showing the results of 4 different models. Keep in mind that forecast intensity is not always very good very far out.
Category 1 hurricanes have winds of 74 to 95 mph and Category 2 have winds of 96 to 110 mph.
Stay tuned.