Tropical Storm Lee has formed in the Atlantic and is forecast to become a hurricane by Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center reported Tuesday night.
The center of Tropical Storm Lee formed between Western Africa and the Windward Islands. It was moving west-northwest at 16 mph Tuesday night, according to the hurricane center, and was located about 1,230 miles east of the Lesser Antilles. It has maximum sustained winds of 50 mph.
Lee was “expected to rapidly intensify into an extremely dangerous hurricane by the weekend,” the hurricane center said. It was forecast to become a hurricane by Wednesday night, and a “major hurricane” by Friday.
According to the National Weather Service, a tropical storm is defined as having maximum sustained winds between 39 and 73 mph, while a hurricane has winds of 74 mph or higher.
This comes just days after Hurricane Idalia left a path of destruction across the Southeast.
That storm made landfall Wednesday in Florida, where it razed homes and downed power poles. It then headed northeast, slamming Georgia, flooding many of South Carolina’s beachfronts and sending seawater into the streets of downtown Charleston. In North Carolina, it poured more than 9 inches of rain on Whiteville, flooding downtown buildings.
Idalia claimed at least two lives, one in Florida and the other in Georgia.
Idalia’s impact from damage and lost economic activity is expected to be in the $12 to $20 billion range, according to Moody’s Analytics.
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