With just weeks having passed since Hurricane Harvey demolished southern Texas, Hurricane Irma devastated the Florida Keys and Hurricane Maria wiped out Puerto Rico, a new storm, Tropical Storm Nate, has just formed in the Southern Caribbean and looks set to strengthen to a hurricane just before making landfall in the Gulf this weekend.
In less than two days, Hurricane Maria has strengthened from a tropical storm to a powerful category five hurricane, dubbed in no uncertain terms as "catastrophic" by the NHC. Though it has been downgraded to a category 4 overnight, the storm made landfall on the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica, leaving it utterly “devastated,” according to the island’s prime minister.
"We're just waiting for daybreak to do an assessment of the damage," Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit told CNN's Rosemary Church.
Does this look familiar?
The National Hurricane Center has upgraded formerly tropical storm Maria to a category one hurricane Sunday as it hurtles northwest toward the Lesser Antilles. The storm, which is expected to hammer the Leeward Islands Monday with 75 mph winds, has inspired several meteorologists to superimpose the latest forecast cone for Maria over the path traveled by Hurricane Irma. And the result, for many residents of the Caribbean, is frankly chilling.
In what were perhaps the two biggest news stories of the past month, Hurricanes Irma and Harvey devastated the American south, disrupting local industry, destroying homes and critical infrastructure and dumping millions of gallons of raw sewage onto city streets - leading to the most destructive beginning to hurricane season in years.