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According to the National Hurricane Centre (NHC), Leslie is expected to strengthen over the next 48 hours to become a hurricane on Tuesday.
The storm is currently packing maximum sustained winds of 60 mph, and is about 595 miles east of Bermuda.
Leslie is moving southwest, before a turn to the north-northeast is forecast on Thursday.
While the NHC forecasts Leslie to “meander for quite a while over the central Atlantic,” and no coastal warnings are in place, the storm could still pose a hazard.
The NHC warns that Swells generated by Leslie will affect Bermuda, the Bahamas, portions of the coast of the southeastern United States, and most of the Greater and Lesser Antilles during
the next few days.
These swells will likely cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions.
Residents in the areas are advised to keep an eye on weather forecasts as the situation progresses.
Leslie has already been lingering for some time.
AccuWeather meteorologists began tracking the subtropical system, which eventually became named storm Leslie, on September 23.
During this time, Leslie has not moved much, hovering above the waters of the central Atlantic for the past week.
AccuWeather Meteorologist Steve Travis said: “Leslie will slowly drift southward through Tuesday and is likely to become a hurricane by the middle of the week,”
As it moves southward, Leslie will find itself in slightly warmer waters, which will help to fuel and strengthen the system.
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Squeezed in between two high-pressure systems, Leslie is forecast to remain over open waters of the Atlantic.
When Leslie finally does leave the central Atlantic, there is the potential that the moisture could be drawn up through the Azores and into Europe.
Leslie is the 12th named system that has developed in the Atlantic Basin for the 2018 tropical season.
This season has seen 67 lives claimed so far, and about $39 billion USD in damage caused.
The deadliest was Hurricane Florence, which struck the US East Coast as a category 4 hurricane.
Florence killed 29 people, and lingered overland for days on end, dumping catastrophic amounts of rain on the Eastern Seaboard.
The first named storm of 2018 was Subtropical Storm Alberto on May 25.
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