Oct. 7, 2001 – The weather system now named Tropical Storm Jerry will probably send heavy winds and rains to the Virgin Islands late Monday or early Tuesday, according to Henry Laskosy, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in San Juan. How much rain and wind the territory gets will depend on how big the storm is by then.
Tropical Depression 12 became Tropical Storm Jerry at the 11 p.m. update on Saturday. Laskosy said it will still be a tropical storm when it nears the Virgin Islands, but he predicted it will reach hurricane proportions as it passes south of the Dominican Republic.
At 5 a.m. Sunday, Jerry had a wind speed of 45 mph with tropical storm-force winds extending outward up to 70 miles from the center. The storm's center was located at 11.5 degrees north latitude and 56.2 degrees west longitude, or nearly 800 miles southeast of St. Croix. It was moving to the west at 18 mph. Minimum pressure was 1003 millibars.
Laskosy predicted that Tropical Storm Jerry will pass about 220 miles south-southwest of St. Croix as it makes its way through the Caribbean — "unless the track shifts farther to the right" and brings it closer to the territory.
Currently, tropical storm watches are posted for Tobago, Barbados, Grenada and its dependencies.
Hurricane Iris, which sent heavy rains and high winds across the territory on Friday when it passed south of St. Croix as a tropical storm, was reported about to hit Jamaica with winds of 85 mph. In the Dominican Republic, a family of three died in a mudslide caused by rains from the hurricane, the Associated Press reported.
