Hurricane Season 2010: System 92L (Caribbean Sea)

GOES-13 Sees Hispaniola, Jamaica and Cuba Being Drenched by System 92L

The GOES-13 satellite keeps an eye on the eastern U.S. and the Caribbean Sea and has been monitoring System 92L for days. Today, Sept. 13, GOES-13 caught the bow-shaped system bringing rainfall to island nations in the eastern Caribbean.

The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite called GOES-13 captured a visible image of the bow-shaped System 92L in the Caribbean as it was bringing heavy rains over Hispaniola, Jamaica and Cuba today, Sept. 13 at 1745 UTC (1:45 p.m. EDT). GOES satellites are operated by NOAA, and the NASA GOES Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. uses those satellite data to create images and animations.

The showers and thunderstorms in System 92L are still poorly organized in this broad area of low pressure over the west-central Caribbean Sea. At 1:53 p.m. EDT today, Montego Bay/Sangster Airport in Jamaica was reporting light rain and 8 mph winds from the east. At the Holguin Airport, Cuba, light rain and thunderstorms were reported with winds blowing from the east-southeast at 12 mph.

The National Hurricane Center does note that there's a 40% chance that System 92L could develop into a tropical cyclone in the next 48 hours as it moves west-northwestward around 20 mph.

Whether it becomes tropical depression 13 in the Atlantic Ocean basin or not, locally heavy rainfall is possible over portions of Hispaniola, Jamaica, Cuba, The Cayman Islands, and the Yucatan Peninsula during the next day or two. These heavy rains could cause life-threatening flash floods and mud slides, especially in areas of mountainous terrain.