Tropical Storm Bonnie, later downgraded to a depression, made landfall early Friday morning but isn’t expected to affect local weather more than some rain and potential gusty winds.
Amy Godsey, a state meteorologist with the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said Bonnie reached Miami-Dade County at approximately 11 a.m. on Friday with 40 mph winds.
According to the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, tropical depressions are storms with up to 33 mph winds while a tropical storm ranges from 39-73 mph. Later on Friday, Bonnie was downgraded to a tropical depression.
“But once over the Gulf of Mexico it could regain its strength,” said Godsey on Friday afternoon. “The forecast from the National Hurricane Center is that it will gain a little more strength. Nothing rapid, not a hurricane or anything.”
Meteorologists are expecting Bonnie to reach winds as high as 50 mph before it makes a second landfall in Louisiana.
Richard Rude, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Office in Ruskin, said the storm’s trajectory took it southeast of Fort Myers as it traveled across the state from Miami-Dade County.
“It’s going to track to the northwest, just south of Fort Myers, this evening and later tonight,” he said Friday. “And move northwest over the Gulf of Mexico.”
Rude said that residents of Cape Coral or Fort Myers were told to expect some rain and gusty winds that were expected to end around midnight. The forecast for Saturday is scattered showers and some thunderstorms, but they aren’t necessarily because of Bonnie, he said.