Tropical Storm Fiona: Will it impact my cruise from Florida to the Caribbean?
Port Canaveral cruise ships (FOX / file)
Tropical Storm Fiona is making its journey over the Atlantic and will bring impacts to the Northern Caribbean Islands on its current forecast track.
The former Tropical Depression Seven strengthened Wednesday night, becoming the sixth named storm of the season.
Most cruise ships that leave from Florida often sail to the Caribbean, so news of Fiona may leave some cruisers worried about their upcoming vacations.
As of Thursday afternoon, the National Hurricane Center said Fiona is located east of the Leeward Islands with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph.
The storm is forecast to produce total rainfall accumulations of 4 to 6 inches in the Northern Leeward Islands, the British and U.S. Virgin Islands andPuerto Rico, with isolated maximum totals of 10inches across eastern Puerto Rico. Eastern Hispaniola can expect 4 to 8 inches of rainfall, with isolated maximum totals of12 inches.
Forecasters said the rains may produce flash and urban flooding, along with isolated mudslides in areas of higher terrain.
Track the storm live in the YouTube video player below:
While booking cruises during hurricane season mean there is a chance a storm could impact it, Gene Sloan, the cruise team lead for the travel website and blog The Points Guy, told FOX Weather it's still relatively rare.
"What they sometimes do is they'll just reroute the ship entirely," Sloan said. "You get on a ship on Saturday that's supposed to do a seven-day trip to the eastern Caribbean, but there's a big hurricane or tropical storm in that area, they can make a call that day or the day before or the day after to reroute that ship to the western Caribbean," Sloan said.
And if there’s going to be bad weather that’s going to be in the way of where the ship is supposed to go, they can move the ship, go early into a port or leave a port late. They can even flop a port.
Bottom line: You would end up with a bunch of different ports but still get a nice, sunny cruise.
"They are really looking at it 24 hours a day and making calls just like the airlines do up until hours before they are supposed to be somewhere," Sloan said.
According to Cruise Critic's website, if a ship skips a port, you're likely entitled to the destination's port fees, which is typically a minimum amount ($7 to $20).
Depending on the size of the hurricane, cruise ships can steer around the most intense part of the storm.
According to the National Weather Service, hurricane-force winds can have about a 25-mile radius in a small hurricane, compared to about a 150-mile radius in a large hurricane.