Florence passes over Bermuda, TD7 forms...

Florence was upgraded to the second hurricane of the season early Sunday morning, about 500km away from Bermuda.  It passed very near the island with an intensity of 80kts and 972mb this morning.  Although still transmitting surface observations sporadically, the radar has been down since ~10Z.  As of this writing, the strongest gust has been 78kts, and sustained at 57kts...

TXKF 111555Z 21057G78KT 3SM -RA BR BKN008 BKN022 OVC120 26/25 A2914 RMK SLP867

This is more or less the end of Florence, and although it may maintain or even gain a little intensity over the next day or so, it will be due to baroclinic enhancement, and it is destined for an extratropical transition in about two days.  This is also the time it will be giving gale-force winds to Newfoundland.

The wave I was mentioning on Saturday to the southeast of Florence was upgraded to TD7 on Sunday night, and is now estimated at 30kts and 1009mb.  It's moving WNW at 8kts and is expected to be upgraded to TS Gordon later today.  The long-range track forecast indicates that it will slide north through the same weakness in the subtropical ridge that Florence did.

Elsewhere, a very well-organized tropical wave exited the African coast this morning after the trek across the continent since its origin 6 days ago over the Ethiopian Highlands.  The wave has an embedded 1008mb surface Low located near 12N 20W.  There's light shear over the system and warm SSTs, so this could quickly become TD8.

As you may recall, we had a strong hurricane off the northeast US coast on the memorable morning of September 11, 2001 (Erin), and that has happened several times since then, so I attached an collage of the four storms we've had on the mornings of other September 11ths, also not far from the coast, including today.

Please visit my tropical Atlantic headquarters.