As Hurricane Irma continues to approach the Southeastern seaboard, two other hurricanes, Katia and Jose, have begun forming in the mid-Atlantic. While Katia is headed toward Mexico, Jose, now a category 2 cyclone, is spinning in Irma’s wake.
As of September 7, 1:00pm CST, Hurricane Katia was classified as a category 1 cyclone with 80mph winds hovering off the coast of central Mexico. According to a bulletin from the National Hurricane Center, the storm is “expected to begin moving toward the coast of Mexico and strengthening tonight or early Friday.”
Hurricane warnings have been issued for parts of east Mexico as #Katia is expected to make landfall by this weekend: t.co/Fyazn4hgJU
A hurricane warning has been issued for a 130 mile stretch of coastline in the Mexican state of Veracruz, which will bear the brunt of the storm.
Mexico City, the country’s capital, is situated about 180 miles inland from where Katia is expected to make landfall, and residents of the city—one of the world’s post populous with 21 million residing in the metropolitan area—are also bracing for torrential rains.
The National Hurricane Center has warned that Katia could produce a storm surge of up to seven feet in addition to 10 to 15 inches of rain, putting coastal Veracruz residents at risk of severe flooding.
The cyclone is not expected to impact the United States.
From space, #GOES16 sees three storms swirling: #Irma, #Jose and #Katia. t.co/GyfF7xAX4v
Hurricane Jose, on the other hand, has been quietly forming in the wake of Hurricane Irma, and while current projections indicate that it may not ever reach land, meteorologists from the National Hurricane Center cautioned that its path could quickly change.
Jose was upgraded to a category 2 hurricane on Thursday afternoon, with sustained winds of up to 105 mph. The storm is expected to intensify over the next 48 hours, and the NHC has issued a hurricane watch for northern portions of the Leeward Islands from Antigua and Barbuda to Anguilla—where some areas were ravaged by Hurricane Irma earlier this week.
There have not been three hurricanes in the Atlantic since Karl, Igor, and Julia spun in nearly identical patterns in 2010:
