Hurricane forecasters are tracking a disturbance 3,000 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday morning that is likely to become a tropical depression in the next 24 hours and the season's second tropical storm over the next few days.
According to Local 6 partner WJXT, the disturbance has a 70 percent chance of becoming a named storm. It is currently well east of Venezuela, but is organizing and pushing northwest toward Puerto Rico.
Recommended Videos
"This area of low pressure could strengthen into Tropical Storm Bertha this week," the National Weather Service tweeted about 7 a.m. Tuesday.
Satellite imagery showed the area of low pressure was becoming more organized. Wind shear is light in the area, which makes further strengthening possible.
It's still too early to predict its potential effect on the U.S. mainland, but some models show the storm eventually re-curving back into the Atlantic and away from the East Coast. However, a few keep the storm on a more westward course, toward Florida's southeast coast.
The Atlantic season's first tropical storm formed off the east coast of Florida on July 1, strengthened into a hurricane, and made landfall between Cape Lookout and Beaufort, N.C., as a Category 2 hurricane on July 3.