============================================

UPDATE: NHC has just Upgraded TD Two to Tropical Storm Bertha. No wonder the Depression was looking so much like a Tropical Storm already in the pic below.

Amazing! A Cape Verde Storm on July 3rd!

============================================

Well I am quite surprised to see the wave held together so well, and the convective max last night gave it just the energy input needed to facilitate cyclogenesis.

I can't remember when I've seen such a well organized Cape Verde depression that looks like a TS already, so very early in the season. Almost certainly, that pocket of anomalous SST's a few degrees above climo just off the west coast of Africa provided the 'fuel for the fire' and allowed the cyclone to form this early in the season. A harbinger of things to come ?!?

It'll be of little consequence as a 'fish spinner', except to shipping lanes. But of much greater consequence is what this implies for the rest of this coming hurricane season. A bumper crop of storms, perhaps?

And, were it not for the shear, we'd have another cyclone forming over the Leeward Islands right now. The tropics are really starting to percolate early this year. July may be quite active. August and September will very likely be 'Bingo-Bango', to bandy some recent vernacular. Interesting times, tropical weather-wise!

It's seems quite likely that, if the shear relaxes for most of the season like in 2005, and with the SST's running a tad warmer than usual, we'll be seeing a conveyor belt of cyclones again this year. Best to be *Extra Prepared* this season!

- Norm in Honolulu (Former Coconut Grove, Florida Resident from '77 - '80 - Survived David in Miami 1979, Allen in Key West 1980, Iwa 1982, Iniki 1992)