Tropical Storm Bret will strengthen slightly on Tuesday night as it moves west toward the Lesser Antilles.
At 11 p.m., it was located 730 miles east of the southern Windward Islands.
Bret is moving west at 17 mph.
Winds are now near 50 mph with higher gusts.
A Tropical Storm Watch has been posted for Barbados and Dominica. Additional watches are likely for other sections of the Lesser Antilles tonight.
Bret is expected to strengthen but is not expected to become a hurricane.
The estimated minimum central pressure is 1003 mb.
The center of Bret is expected to move over parts of the Lesser Antilles Thursday afternoon and Thursday night, and move into the eastern Caribbean Friday.
There is high uncertainty over the system’s exact long-term track, but Bret is likely to disappear over the Caribbean and not affect Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia.
Bret is the second tropical storm of the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season. The first named storm, Arlene, was a short-lived system in the Gulf of Mexico.
The second area of interest, Invest 93L, continues to organize in the eastern waters of the open Atlantic.
It now has a high chance of developing, and could become a tropical depression by midweek.
Hurricane season ends in Nov. 30.
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