FLORIDA, United States, Monday October 9, 2017 – Another tropical storm has formed in the Atlantic basin, but forecasters say it currently poses no threat to the Caribbean.

Ophelia was named this morning in the National Hurricane Centre’s (NHC) 11 a.m. bulletin, when it said a tropical depression over the open Atlantic had strengthened into the 15^th storm of the 2017 season, about 860 miles west southwest of the Azores.

At that time, it had maximum sustained winds near 40 miles per hour and was headed north northeast at five miles per hour.

The Miami-based NHC said some strengthening is forecast in the next 48 hours but, as it stands, Ophelia poses no threat to land.

The devastating Hurricane Maria was the last system that people across the Caribbean paid attention to, as Nate, which formed last Thursday just off Nicaragua before making landfall in the US as a Category 1 hurricane a few days later, made no impact on the region.

Nate made its first US landfall near the mouth of the Mississippi River in southeast Louisiana on Saturday, with maximum sustained winds near 85 miles per hour, and subsequently made a second landfall near Biloxi, Mississippi, shortly after midnight yesterday, as a Category 1 hurricane.

Nate was downgraded to a tropical depression late yesterday morning.

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