As of 5pm Thursday, Tropical Storm Fiona was located about 400 miles east of the Leeward Islands. Strong westerly shear continues to take its toll on the system, however slow strengthening has still taken place and max sustained winds are now up to 60 mph.

Any further strengthening should be limited as long as shear persists over the next few days. That being the case, forecast confidence is high with respect to both intensity and track over the next 2-3 days. The primary impacts will be gusty winds and periods of heavy rain for Puerto Rico and nearby islands – especially to the east. The Dominican Republic could very well see several inches of rain too by early next week, but that’ll be highly dependent on the track of the storm.

In regards to the future of Fiona beyond the next few days, there are a lot of factors in play. Long range models have a wide range of solution from a storm making landfall in Florida to a stronger storm staying well to the east and curving back out into the North Atlantic. Right now, any of these options are still on the table. Land interaction will play a big role with Fiona, and until we see how the storm navigates through the islands and how it fares with some extremely mountainous terrain it’ll be tough to nail down whether or not there will be any impacts for the U.S.

We’ll keep you posted!

The National Hurricane Center began issuing advisories for Tropical Depression 7 late Wednesday morning. It’ll be moving generally westward over the next 1-2 days, likely bringing some gusty winds and locally heavy rainfall to parts of the Leeward Islands Friday into Saturday.

The system will continue to battle with strong westerly wind shear on it’s northern flank, as well as some areas of dry air. These factors, along with land interaction, are likely to keep the system weak over the next few days. At most, it’ll be a low end Tropical Storm Fiona.

The most likely scenario here is a turn to the north at some point after moving across parts of the Caribbean, but at this point it’s simply too early to say how things will evolve and whether or not this could have any impacts on the U.S.

We’ll keep you posted!