Tropical Storm Chris weakened into a depression Friday night as it approached Cuba.
The storm had maximum sustained winds late Friday of 30 mph, 9 mph below the threshold for a tropical storm and well below hurricane strength of 74 mph. Forecasters said Chris might creep up to tropical storm strength again but wouldn’t grow much stronger than that.
“It’s going to be hard for it to strengthen to a hurricane within the next five days,” meteorologist Robbie Berg said at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Forecasters expected Chris to head over Cuba and into the Gulf of Mexico, reaching Texas or Mexico by early Wednesday.
At 11 p.m. Friday, the depression’s poorly defined center was about 135 miles south-southeast of Long Island in the Bahamas and about 250 miles east of Camaguey, Cuba. It was moving west at near 13 mph and was expected to move near the north coast of Cuba on Saturday.
Chris is expected to drop one to two inches of rain across Haiti, eastern Cuba and southeast Bahamas and up to four inches in the higher elevations.
There were few reports of damage from Chris, though in Puerto Rico, the Fajardo River spilled its banks Thursday afternoon and sent water gushing over a highway, temporarily shutting down the road in the U.S. territory’s northeast coast.
Chris’ sustained winds had reached 65 mph on Wednesday, threatening to make it the first hurricane of the 2006 Atlantic season.
By MIRANDA LEITSINGER, The Associated Press
