Tropical Storm Delta transformed into a hurricane in the Caribbean on Monday and will reach high intensity passing over Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Tuesday, before reaching the southern United States this week, meteorologists said.
Delta is blowing with sustained winds of up to 130km / h and even stronger gusts southwest of Jamaica, and is heading towards the coasts of the United States of the Gulf of Mexico at a speed of 11km / h, the National Hurricane Center (NHC), from its Miami headquarters.
“We expect further rapid escalation (Tuesday), and we expect Delta to be a high intensity hurricane as it approaches the Yucatan Peninsula,” NHC said in its 12:00 GMT Tuesday bulletin.
High intensity hurricanes are those belonging to categories 3 to 5, on a scale of up to 5, with winds over 178 km / h.
The northern tip of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula is affected by this vigilance, the NHC said, which means the region will experience dangerous conditions within the next 36 hours.
Based on the forecast track, the Eye of Delta is expected to approach northeastern Yucatan overnight on Tuesday and enter the Gulf of Mexico early Wednesday.
Without obstacle to slow it down, it will reach between Thursday evening and Friday morning the southern United States at an as yet undetermined point of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi or Alabama.
Delta is the 26e storm with a name during an unusually rough Atlantic hurricane season, during which several records were broken, including the exhaustion of the list of expected names for cyclones. This is why meteorologists began to identify them using the Greek alphabet.
In addition, “it will become the 10e tropical cyclone of the season ”to make landfall, wrote meteorologist MJ Ventrice of The Weather Company on Twitter.
“It would break the record for the most tropical cyclones making landfall in a single season,” he added.