Dean Update - Another Tropical System Forming

Hurricane Dean Update - Another Tropical System Forming

More updates on damage in Jamaica will be reported in our Caribbean Travel Blog as we get information, or you can go to http://go-jamaica.com/blog/

Hurricane Dean is headed west towards the Yucatan, still packing Category 4 winds, with the potential to add even more punch.

Dean is over waters with some of the highest heat content anywhere in the Atlantic, and could well take advantage of this energy source and become a Category 5 hurricane today.

Landfall will occur late tonight or early Tuesday morning over the Yucatan Peninsula. Landfall should occur over 100 miles south of Cozumel, so the Mexican Riviera areas of Cancun and Cozumel will only experience tropical storm force winds.

The region where Dean is expected to hit, just north of the border with Belize, has one large city, Chetumal.

Chetumal is well inland, and the expected storm surge of up to 11 feet will mostly flood very sparsely populated areas.

Damage from Dean in Mexico may be considerably higher for the storm's second landfall, if it hits the major city of Tampico in the western Gulf of Mexico.

Another Tropical System Invest 92L

As it moves northwest at 15-20 mph, it has some potential to slowly develop into a tropical system, the National Hurricane Center in Miami-Dade County said. There is an area of disturbed weather associated with a tropical wave a few hundred miles northeast of the Lesser Antilles Islands.

NHC has labeled this system "Invest 92L" this morning. Wind shear is about 10 knots in this region, which is low enough to allow some development over the next few days.

This area is moving west-northwest, and will be near the U.S. East coast late this week. The next trough of low pressure strong enough to recurve this system is not due until Saturday, so this system will definitely be a threat to the U.S. if it develops.

Erin Finally Dies Out
Tropical Storm Erin finally died this morning over Missouri.

Erin re-intensified Saturday night over Oklahoma, forming a tropical storm like-vortex that brought up to 11 inches of rain to Oklahoma, and helped feed disastrous rains of up to a foot over southeastern Minnesota.

At least 13 deaths are being blamed on the resulting flooding, six of them in Oklahoma.