Philippe Remains a Category 1 Hurricane

Philippe is a category 1 hurricane moving over the open Central North Atlantic well east of Bermuda.

The hurricane will start to experience a more hostile environment today and into this weekend as strong upper level winds oriented southwest to northeast overtake it's circulation. This is already causing the storm to become tilted to the northeast.

Water temperatures along the expected path of Philippe are going to remain warm enough to keep the system tropical. However, drier air and that strong shear will cause the system to unravel. Already it has begun to weaken slightly, and this trend to will continue over the next 24 hours.

So, we are expecting Philippe to be downgraded to a tropical storm later tonight or Saturday. Philippe will track into the North Atlantic this weekend and become a non tropical storm system.

Computer models are forecasting the development of low pressure roughly from the southeastern Gulf to the western Bahamas to the southeast Gulf of Mexico this weekend. The exact location of where development is going to take place is highly uncertain at this point since we don't have a feature forming just yet. Once developed this feature will head northward and bring Florida gusty winds and wet stormy weather mostly from Saturday night through Sunday night.

Some computer information suggests that this low pressure area will become an organized tropical system that will track northward either just west of the Florida peninsula or along and near the east coast of the Sunshine State.

All interests in Florida and over the coastal Southeast U.S. should monitor the development of this system this weekend.

Regardless of strength this system should bring a large area of rain northward across the southeast U.S. early next week and further north over the mid Atlantic and Northeast U.S. late next week.

Since much of the Northeast U.S. has experienced higher than normal rainfall during the past few weeks there is a higher than normal chance for flooding rainfall from this system during the middle and latter part of next week over the northeast United States.

The rest of the North Atlantic Tropical Basin should remain relatively quiet through the weekend.

By AccuWeather Expert Senior Meteorologists Dan Kottlowski and Brian Wimer