Storm Jerry grows in the Atlantic with the forecast to be a hurricane on the weekend

Storm Jerry strengthens “modestly” as it moves across the Atlantic, where it could bring swells to Puerto Rico and become a hurricane over the weekend, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned this Thursday.

The cyclone was in the latest report 570 kilometers (355 miles) east-southeast of the Northern Leeward Islands, in the Caribbean Sea, with maximum sustained winds of 100 kilometers per hour (65 miles) and a displacement to the northwest at 31 kilometers per hour (20 miles).

Due to its advance, there is a tropical storm watch in the Caribbean islands of Antigua, Barbuda, Anguilla, St. Kitts, Nevis and Montserrat, among others, but the NHC warned that the “British and United States Virgin Islands should monitor Jerry’s progress”.

“Swells generated by Jerry are beginning to reach the Leeward and Windward Islands. These swells will spread westward towards the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico tonight, then towards the rest of the Greater Antilles over the next two days,” he indicated.

The US agency qualified that, for now, “a modest strengthening is forecast during the next 12 to 24 hours”, with a “gradual” intensification over the “next few days”, and the prospect of “becoming a hurricane late Friday or Saturday”.

Even so, the NCH does not alert of risks for the continental U.S. territory.

So far, there have been ten cyclones this year in the Atlantic: hurricanes Erin, Gabrielle, Humberto, and Imelda, and storms Andrea, Barry, Chantal, Dexter, Fernand, and Jerry, of which Chantal has been the only one to make landfall this year in the United States, where it caused two deaths in July in North Carolina.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted an “above-normal” hurricane season, estimating between 13 and 18 tropical storms, of which between five and nine could become hurricanes.