Tropical Storm Earl Forms in Northern Caribbean

Just a couple of hours ago, it became official: the weather pattern heretofore known as Invest 97-L, which had been traveling westward across the Atlantic from Africa before entering the northern Caribbean Sea, has intensified enough and developed the required circulation to become the next tropical storm of this still-early hurricane season: Earl.  Earl has, at this writing, maximum sustained winds of 45 mph and is continuing its westward direction, with Jamaica and the Cayman Islands in its crosshairs before it heads off to Central America, with a landfall somewhere between the Honduran coast and eastern Yucatan in Mexico most likely.  Right now, folks in the country of Belize, with its very low-lying terrain at just above sea level, are feeling especially vulnerable.  Let's all hope and pray for their safety...this storm is already being held responsible for six deaths in the Dominican Republic.  And it is expected to further intensify, possibly to hurricane strength, before finally hitting the mainland...

Meanwhile, a couple of other storm patterns are making their way across the Atlantic, more or less following what is now Earl's path...it looks as if the Atlantic hurricane season has now begun to kick into high gear! Just making a suggestion, but it looks like it might be a prudent idea to begin to stock up on nonperishables and make other preliminary hurricane preparations, my fellow Floridians...and anyone else living near the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coasts, for that matter...