Tracking The Tropics: Hurricane Humberto & Two Tropical Waves

MIAMI (CBSMiami) - Hurricane Humberto has strengthened into a Category 2 storm and is forecast to become a major Category 3 Hurricane later tonight or tomorrow.

At 8 a.m., it was located 555 miles West of Bermuda with maximum sustained winds of 100 miles per hour and moving east-northeast at 8 miles per hour.

The center of Humberto is forecast to move near or north of Bermuda tomorrow. Thursday and Friday Humberto is forecast to move northeastward into the northern Atlantic and weaken to a Category 1 by this weekend.

Although Humberto is moving away from the US, the swells and higher wave heights associated with it are leading to rough surf, hazardous boating and dangerous rip currents along the Atlantic coast.

The small low pressure system located about 1,000 miles East of the Lesser Antilles has become a little better organized. This disturbance has a high potential (a 90% chance) of becoming a tropical depression during the next 48 hours and over the next five days as it moves slowly northwestward to west-northwestward. Models are forecasting it will likely stay out in the open waters of the Atlantic.

There is also a broad area of low pressure over the northwestern Gulf of Mexico near the central Texas coast. The National Hurricane Center says this wave has a low potential (30% chance) of tropical cyclone formation. Some slight development is possible before the system moves inland along the NW Gulf Coast later tonight or early Wednesday. Regardless of development, heavy rain and flash flooding along the coastal regions of southwestern Louisiana and central and upper Texas tonight and Wednesday.