MIAMI (Reuters) - Tropical Storm Jose formed near Bermuda on Sunday, becoming the 10th named storm of the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season, U.S. forecasters said.
Jose looked set to be short-lived and to have little impact on land. But the U.S. National Hurricane Center said another tropical weather system was revving up off the coast of Africa, posing a bigger potential threat for later this week.
Jose formed near the British territory of Bermuda on Sunday morning as Hurricane Irene, the first hurricane of the 2011 Atlantic season, closed in on New York City after swirling up the U.S. East Coast from North Carolina, where it made landfall on Saturday.
Irene was downgraded to a tropical storm as it pelted the New York region with driving winds and rain.
At 8 p.m. EDT (midnight GMT), the Miami-based hurricane center said Jose was 125 miles north-northwest of Bermuda and churning northward over the central Atlantic Ocean.
The storm was packing top sustained winds of 45 miles per hour and little change in strength was expected before it headed out further to sea on Monday.
Weather watchers were also keeping an eye on Sunday on a cluster of showers and thunderstorms associated with a tropical wave hundreds of miles south of the Cape Verde islands off West Africa.
In an updated forecast on Sunday night, the hurricane center said the system had a "high" or "near 100 percent" chance of becoming a tropical cyclone within 48 hours.
If the system becomes a tropical storm it will be named Katia but it was too soon to gauge its possible threat to the U.S. East Coast or energy interests in the Gulf of Mexico with any confidence.
(Reporting by Tom Brown; Editing by Paul Simao)