DATE: Wednesday, July 2, 1997               TAG: 9707020551

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A14  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   39 lines

FIRST TROPICAL STORM OF SEASON FORMS OFF HATTERAS, BUT LANDFALL NOT EXPECTED

The first tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season formed Tuesday southeast of Cape Hatteras, but it is not expected to threaten the coast.

Tropical Storm Ana developed from a tropical depression that the National Hurricane Center had been tracking since Monday.

It had not been expected to strengthen. But when an Air Force Reserve aircraft flew into the system Tuesday afternoon to check it, the crew found sustained winds of tropical storm force - 45 mph - with some higher gusts. A tropical depression becomes a named storm when its winds exceed 39 mph.

``Ana has probably been a tropical storm for the past 12 hours,'' Miles Lawrence, a forecaster at the Hurricane Center, said at 5 p.m. Even with that intensification, little change in strength is forecast through today, however.

At 5 p.m., the center of Ana was about 300 miles south-southeast of Hatteras and moving east at 10 mph. A turn toward the northeast was expected overnight and today.

Tropical storm-force winds extended up to 115 miles from the center, and the estimated minimum central pressure was 29.59 inches.

Computer models ``show a turn toward the northeast and north with acceleration over the next 72 hours,'' Lawrence said. But satellite images showed that winds were ``shearing'' off the top of the storm to the east of its circulation, ``so that additional strengthening is unlikely in the next 12 to 24 hours.''

William Gray, a Colorado State University professor and hurricane forecaster, has predicted 11 tropical storms will form this season with seven of them becoming hurricanes. That would make 1997 the third consecutive year of above-average hurricane activity. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

TRACKER'S GUIDE

STEVE STONE/The Virginian-Pilot

[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]

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