Not much has changed since last night. Bret has strengthened a little, and will probably gain a bit more before starting to slowly decay as it crosses the central Caribbean. There are watches up for the central Windward Islands of Barbados, Dominica, Martinique, and St. Lucia; these will likely to change over to warnings today. Here’s the TAOS/TC impact swath map … click to embiggen:
On this track there are around 660 thousand people who might experience tropical storm force winds, economic impacts on the order of $100 Million USD, mostly transient impacts but there is a risk of flash flooding, trees down, that sort of thing. Bret is forecast to fall apart south of the island of Hispaniola (Haiti/Dominican Republic). Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the Leeward Islands might get rain from the fringes but no significant winds, and that should be about it. For the official word, your best bet as always is the Hurricane Center’s Key Messages regarding Tropical Storm Bret (en Español: Mensajes Claves).
As for the disturbance behind Bret that NHC is watching, it is still tagged with an 80% chance of becoming at least a depression. The major models and forecaster consensus has it traveling west of the Caribbean Islands, perhaps passing in the vicinity of Bermuda in a week or so, but that’s a long time from now. No threat to the mainland US at this point (or likely ever). Here’s the big picture, TAFB’s tropical analysis as of this morning, with the storms in the lower right corner …
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