New Tropical Storm Forms in Atlantic

Tropical Storm Ernesto, the fifth named storm of the 2000 hurricane season, formed deep in the Atlantic Ocean but posed no immediate threat to land, a meteorologist said. “It’s a minimal tropical storm,” said Eric Blake of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Ernesto’s top sustained winds were near 40 mph, and its tropical storm-force winds extended 115 miles from its center. The storm was about 520 miles east of the Leeward Islands, about 1,700 miles southeast of Florida and moving northwest at about 15 mph.