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Tampa weather | Watching Invest 97L
FOX 13 meteorologist Dave Osterberg has the latest on Invest 97L, which is expected to develop and get the name Helene this week, possibly hitting Florida.
TAMPA, Fla. - Invest 97L could soon develop and approach Florida as a major hurricane later this week, according to the National Hurricane Center.
As of Monday morning, the NHC is giving the system an 80 percent chance for development in the next two days, bumping those chances up to 90 percent over the next seven days. Once that happens, it will get the name Helene.
FOX 13 meteorologist Dave Osterberg says the exact track remains uncertain, but most models show the system strengthening into a hurricane as it moves through the warm, deep waters of the Yucatán Channel.
Depending on the path, the storm could make landfall in the Florida Panhandle or the Big Bend area sometime on Thursday.
"We are going to get impacts," Osterberg said. "Those impacts will be felt late Wednesday and pretty much all day Thursday."
A shift of just 50 miles either way will make a big difference when it comes to potential impacts across the Bay Area, according to Osterberg.
Models will likely give us a clearer picture of the system's exact path over the next 24 to 36 hours, Osterberg said.
Elsewhere in the tropics, a disturbance between western Africa and the Cabo Verde Islands has a 20 percent chance to develop in the next two days and a 70 percent chance of development in the next seven days.
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