Tropical Storm Gamma Becomes Atlantic’s 24th Storm of 2020

(Bloomberg) -- Tropical Storm Gamma will bring flooding rains across Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula before emerging into the southern Gulf of Mexico early next week, where it's unlikely to pose an immediate threat to U.S. offshore energy platforms.

Winds as strong as 60 miles (97 kilometers) per hour and as much as 15 inches (38 centimeters) of rain could hit the Yucatan, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

“This rainfall may produce life-threatening flash floods and mudslides,” Jack Beven, a forecaster at the center, wrote in his outlook.

Gamma is the Atlantic's 24th named storm, the fastest that tally has been reached, but 2020 as whole is still second behind 2005's 28 systems as the most active on record. There have been so many named storms that the hurricane center has used up all the names on its official list and has begun designating new storms with Greek letters.

Once Gamma re-emerges in the Gulf of Mexico next week, the forecast is unclear because a second storm may develop in its wake and that would cause some quirks to develop for both their tracks. The immediate threat to U.S. oil and natural gas platforms off the Texas and Louisiana coast is low. The storm is forecast to grow in the Bay of Campeche in the southern Gulf, where state-run oil firm Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, has offshore platforms.

“I am not too concerned for our production areas across the Gulf,” said Jim Rouiller, lead meteorologist with the Energy Weather Group. Storms have shut down offshore energy production in the western Gulf several times this year.

The eventual danger is that two storms could begin to interact, as well as being pushed along by larger weather patterns, causing one of them to near the eastern U.S. Gulf Coast in about two weeks, said Ryan Truchelut, president of Weather Tiger LLC. A lot can happen before that and the forecast is “complicated.”

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