The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

THE remnants of Tropical Storm Dolly no longer pose a tropical cyclone threat to The Bahamas, but the system could still bring increased showers, locally heavy rain and gusty winds as it moves through the region.

Shayvonne Moxey-Bonamy, acting senior deputy director at the Department of Meteorology, said Dolly has weakened so significantly that its chances of redeveloping into a tropical cyclone over the next seven days have fallen to zero.

“Dolly is not a tropical storm,” Mrs Moxey-Bonamy said. “As a matter of fact, Dolly is not even a depression.”

She said strong upper-level wind shear had stripped the system of the organisation needed to sustain a tropical cyclone.

The National Hurricane Center said yesterday that Dolly’s remnants were producing disorganised showers and thunderstorms near Hispaniola, the Turks and Caicos and the southeastern Bahamas.

It said significant redevelopment was no longer expected, putting the chance of tropical cyclone formation at near zero through both 48 hours and seven days.

However, the NHC warned that the remnants could still produce locally heavy rain and gusty winds across parts of the region during the next several days.

Mrs Moxey-Bonamy said residents should now view Dolly as a tropical wave carrying moisture into the area rather than as a developing storm.

“Look at it as a wave coming in bringing moisture,” she said.

She said the moisture, combined with an upper-level system and a weak frontal boundary, would increase the chance of showers heading into the weekend.

Dolly formed as a tropical storm in the central Atlantic on Thursday, August 27, with maximum sustained winds of about 40mph.

By Friday morning, the National Hurricane Center said the circulation had deteriorated and Dolly had become an open tropical wave.

The storm’s rapid weakening came as it encountered an increasingly hostile atmospheric environment.

While Dolly had maintained tropical-storm strength early Friday, the NHC had already observed dry air entering its circulation and signs that its low-level centre was losing definition.

Its collapse removes the immediate tropical cyclone concern for The Bahamas as the Atlantic season approaches its climatological peak.

Colorado State University had forecast a somewhat below-average 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, predicting 13 named storms, six hurricanes and two major hurricanes. The long-term averages are 14.4 named storms, 7.2 hurricanes and 3.2 major hurricanes.

The university had attributed the quieter forecast largely to an expected transition towards El Niño, which typically increases upper-level wind shear across the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean and can suppress hurricane development.

It had nevertheless warned that seasonal totals do not determine the threat to any particular location.

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30.