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This Thursday, Tropical Storm Barry took form in the Gulf of Mexico , likely bringing hurricane conditions across the north-central Gulf coast over the next couple of days, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
The storm had maximum sustained winds of 64 kph as of 15:00 GMT on Thursday , qualifying as a tropical storm, the U.S. National Weather Service said. Barry is forecast to make landfall as the first Atlantic hurricane of the 2019 season by late Friday or early Saturday .
While the storm did not yet have hurricane-strength winds, officials from the U.S. warned the heavy rainfall and storm surge it would bring could threaten low-lying lands.
Barry could become a Category 1 hurricane with winds of at least 119 kph and drive ocean water up the Mississippi River , just west of New Orleans, Louisiana , where it is expected to make landfall, forecasters said. The storm surge is projected to bring .9 to 1.8 meters to shore, and it could bring up to 38cm of rain to the central Gulf Coast , worsening flooding from heavy rains, according to the weather service.
The hurricane season in the Atlantic basin started officially on June 1st , but before, on May 20th , the subtropical storm Andrea (a hybrid between the storms of cold-core and those of warm-core) took form at the southeast of Bermuda , which weakened immediately and caused no harm.
According to the updated forecast of the Colorado State University (CSU) from the U.S. released on July 9th , there will be approximately 14 storms with name, which is two storms more than the annual average.
Six
of the storms will turn into hurricanes. Two of them will be of a higher category, that is, over category 3 in the Saffir/Simpson scale .
On Wednesday , U.S. oil producers (Anadarko Petroleum, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell and others) cut nearly a third of Gulf of Mexico crude output ahead of the storm, and evacuated production platforms and rigs for the safety of the workers, after a mandatory orde from local authorities. This has pushed oil and gasoline prices higher on Thursday.
