Tropical Storm Gaston:  As forecast Tropical Storm Gaston briefly intensified into a weak category 1 hurricane early this morning at around 1400 nautical miles to our east-southeast. However, as also forecast, it has now weakened slightly to a strong tropical storm with sustained winds of 60 knots, and is located around 1300 nautical miles to our east-southeast, moving northwest at 15 knots.

The current track forecast continues a similar theme to previous advisories with a continued track northwestwards towards the east of Bermuda this weekend (current closest point of approach is around 350 nautical miles to our east on Monday morning), before then recurving north then northeast away from the Bermuda area.

As for intensity, Gaston is currently being affected by strong southwesterly wind shear, weakening it slightly.  However, conditions become more conducive for development into the weekend, and the current forecast has Gaston passing Bermuda around 350nm to the east as a category 2 (90 knot) hurricane on Monday morning.

There continues to be some uncertainty with track later this weekend (when it begins to recurve north then northeast to our east) and for this reason we will continue to monitor closely.

Once again, despite any slight changes in forecast track, we still expect Gaston to send building east to southeasterly swells into our area this weekend and early next week, which are likely to produce hazardous surf/rip current conditions, especially along the South Shore.

BWS will issue advisories on Gaston every six hours, which can be found via this link:

http://www.weather.bm/maps/TropicalStormInfo.asp?WTNTnum=WTNT22