Tropical Storm Dolly has formed in the Atlantic Ocean, with early forecast guidance raising concern that the system could eventually track toward the US East Coast.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Dolly strengthened rapidly into a tropical storm at 11am ET on Thursday.
The system effectively skipped the initial tropical depression phase, organizing quickly enough to produce sustained winds topping 40 mph.
Early spaghetti models, which map a range of potential tracks for tropical storms and hurricanes, indicate a significant chance that Dolly could push toward Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
Several projected paths then take the storm in the direction of Cuba, the Bahamas and Florida’s coastline.
Some runs from the American forecast model, known as the GFS, have shown Dolly traveling as far north as the Carolinas. Still, forecasters caution that model tracks can change sharply as a storm becomes better organized and moves closer to possible landfall.
NHC officials have said Dolly could remain a “short-lived tropical storm,” especially if it runs into strong Atlantic wind shear that would limit development and keep it from becoming a hurricane.
AccuWeather meteorologists, however, warned that Dolly may still find a route through the unsettled Atlantic environment and potentially strengthen into a larger storm nearer the eastern United States.
Tropical Storm Dolly (Pictured) formed in the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday, August 27
Forecasting models predict that Tropical Storm Dolly will follow a straight path to the Caribbean islands and US East Coast
AccuWeather Lead Hurricane Expert Alex DaSilva said in a statement: ‘If Dolly can survive the dry air, wind shear and land interaction near the islands, the environment does become more conducive for development and strengthening off the Southeast coast mid-to-late next week.’
Heavy rainfall is expected to begin impacting the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola this weekend.
Puerto Rico is currently ranked as having the highest risk from tropical rain and severe wind from August 27 through September 9, according to AccuWeather.
The weather service added that the entire East Coast and the Gulf Coast also face a ‘low’ risk of tropical rain and wind from the approaching storm, with the warning stretching from Texas to Maine.
‘There is certainly a chance for this wave to bring rain to Southeastern US one way or another. The question is in what form?’ DaSilva added.
The naming of Tropical Storm Dolly just days after the death of legendary singer Dolly Parton was purely coincidental, as the lists of named storms for each Atlantic hurricane season are publicly released years in advance.
The National Hurricane Center has already announced the names for tropical storms and hurricanes that could form until 2031.
While Dolly is believed to have found a narrow corridor in the Atlantic which allowed it to grow into a large, organized cyclone, meteorologists have pointed out that the impact of a ‘Super’ El Niño around the globe has quieted the usually busy hurricane season.
Pictured: Satellite image of Tropical Storm Dolly in the Atlantic Ocean on August 27
Meteorologists warn that Tropical Storm Dolly may follow a path that allows the storm to strengthen closer to the US
El Niño forms when the surface temperature of the Pacific Ocean becomes noticeably warmer than its historical average. A Super El Niño means those temperatures rise by more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2.0 degrees Celsius).
This flips weather patterns worldwide, causing more hurricanes to form in the Pacific while preventing storms from gathering strength in the Atlantic by causing more wind shear and drier air that tears apart the structure of cyclones.
Dolly is only the fourth named Atlantic storm to develop this year even though hurricane season officially began three months ago. Hurricane season lasts until November 30.
For comparison, there have already been 12 named storms in the Pacific this summer, including multiple storms impacting the Hawaiian islands.
Currently, NHC is not tracking any other potential storms throughout the Atlantic which could form in the next seven days.
The last tropical storm to form before Dolly was Cristobal on August 12, but that cyclone never approached the US and only held its strength for a day.
Long-range forecasters recently downgraded their predictions for the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season due to the emergence of the Super El Niño.
As of July 7, AccuWeather changed its prediction to between eight and 14 named storms in the Atlantic this year, down from their prediction of 11 to 16 in March.
However, AccuWeather still predicted that four to seven of these storms will reach hurricane strength, and that three to five named storms will make landfall in the US.
AccuWeather’s Lead Long Range Forecaster Paul Pastelok told Our News Outlet in June: ‘It only takes one storm, and then boom! We’re not saying that El Niño is going to weaken and dampen the Atlantic Basin season completely.’
‘There’s still a lot of warm water, a lot of potential there. So, [I] just wanted to make sure [if] people were saying, “Oh, we don’t have to worry about anything this year.” That’s not true. It only takes one storm.’
