Tropical Storm Maria forms in Atlantic, could threaten Leewards

MIAMI, (Reuters) – Tropical Storm Maria formed in  the Atlantic today while Hurricane Katia churned up the  surf along the beaches of Bermuda and the eastern United  States, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Maria could threaten Puerto Rico and the Leeward Islands of  the northeast Caribbean during the weekend, but posed no  immediate danger to land.
It was about 1,305 miles (2,095 km) east of the Lesser  Antilles and racing rapidly westward. Maria had top winds of 50  miles per hour (85 km per hour) and could strengthen slightly  in the next two days, forecasters at the hurricane center in  Miami said.
Computer models showed it turning northwest early next week  but it was too early to know whether Maria would then curve  away from the United States, like Katia is forecast to do.
Katia has weakened significantly in the last two days but  is still a hurricane with 85 mph (140 kph) winds, making it a  Category 1 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson intensity  scale. It was a Category 4 at its peak.
Katia was centered about 320 miles (515 km) southwest of  the mid-Atlantic island of Bermuda and was expected to pass  between the eastern U.S. coast and Bermuda by Thursday.
Forecasters said the core of the storm would stay out to  sea, but Katia was so wide that its outer squalls could reach  the shores of Bermuda, a British territory and global  reinsurance hub whose 70,000 residents were under a tropical  storm watch.
Katia generated large swells that kicked up the surf and  caused dangerous rip currents along the beaches of the Eastern  United States, Bermuda, the Greater Antilles and parts of the  Bahamas, the forecasters said.
Once past Bermuda, Katia is forecast to curve eastward over  open seas where it would pose no further threat to land.
Neither Maria nor Katia was near the Gulf of Mexico, where  U.S. oil and natural gas operations are concentrated.
But forecasters were keeping watch on a disturbance in the  southwest Gulf of Mexico that they gave a 60 percent chance of  developing into a tropical cyclone in the next few days.
Computer models varied widely as to its potential path.  Some took it west over Mexico while at least one took it  northeast toward the Louisiana-Mississippi coast.
The flurry of tropical disturbances is not uncommon for  September, the traditional peak of the June-through-November  Atlantic hurricane season.