Tropical storm heads for Hispaniola, maybe Florida

Tropical Storm Emily was bearing down on Hispaniola on Wednesday and may become a low-level hurricane if it survives its passage over the mountainous Caribbean island shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti

Emily was located about 265 miles (425 km) southeast of the Dominican capital Santo Domingo late on Tuesday night packing maximum sustained winds of 50 miles per hour (85 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center NHC.L said.

It said the fifth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season was churning west-northwest at 14 miles (22 km) per hour on a track that would put it over Hispaniola late on Wednesday before taking aim at the southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos islands on Thursday.

Emily posed no apparent threat to oil and gas production facilities in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. But if it survives its trek across the high terrain of Hispaniola, the Miami-based NHC said weather conditions appeared to support intensification later this week.

The NHC also revised its tracking guidance to reflect the possibility that Emily would cut a northward path up the Florida peninsula beginning on Friday night.

Its forecast of the storm’s wind speeds was also revised upward, opening the door to the possibility of it becoming a low-level Category 1 hurricane by Monday.

“Uncertainty in the track forecast remains larger than usual beyond 48 hours,” the NHC said.

Warning of heavy rains associated with the storm, the NHC said these could cause “life-threatening flash floods and mudslides in areas of mountainous terrain.”

Heavy rainfall can be particularly threatening to Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. In June, rains triggered flooding and mudslides, killing 23 people in Port-au-Prince.

The flooding also worsened a cholera epidemic in Haiti, where nearly 6,000 people have died since October after an outbreak of the deadly diarrheal disease spread by contaminated water and food.