RIGHT NOW: Tropical Storm Cristobal is expected to move northward away from the Bahamas. The storm’s maximum sustained winds early Monday are near 50 mph (85 kph).
WHERE IT’S HEADED: Cristobal is centered about 110 miles (180 kilometers) east-northeast of San Salvador and is moving north near 3 mph (6 kph). The storm’s forecast track shows it staying away from the U.S. East Coast.
THE DAMAGE IT’S DONE: The man who died was drowned when he tried to drive his pickup truck across a rushing river in the Dominican Republic’s Hato Mayor, a province northeast of the capital of Santo Domingo, Juan Manuel Mendez, the country’s emergency operations director, said Sunday.
The two missing people were swept away late Saturday by a river that burst its banks in the western Haiti port town of Saint Marc. “We’re still looking for the bodies,” said Luckecy Mathieu, a civil protection coordinator.
Many residents in the sparsely populated southeastern Bahamas and the tiny British Caribbean dependency of the Turks and Caicos Islands hunkered down as Cristobal’s rains pelted windowpanes.
Capt. Stephen Russell, head of the Bahamas’ emergency management agency, said there had been no reports of damage. Air traffic to the southeastern Bahamian islands had not been suspended, but sea vessels were advised to remain in port, he said.
Turks and Caicos Premier Rufus Ewing advised residents to remain indoors as much as possible because the island chain south of the Bahamas was still experiencing heavy rains and “extensive flooding in low-lying areas,” especially on Middle Caicos and North Caicos islands.
“The inclement weather is expected to linger for another 48 hours and the flooding is expected to worsen as a result,” Ewing said in a Sunday statement.
WHAT TO EXPECT: The U.S. National Hurricane Center says gradual strengthening is expected and Cristobal could become a hurricane in the next few days.
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