Back-to-back tropical storms Fred and Grace barrel towards Florida coast

Tropical storm Fred is expected to make landfall in southwest Florida on Saturday

Two back-to-back tropical storms are expected to hit Florida in the coming days as the state braces amid an already busy Atlantic hurricane season.

Tropical storm Fred is expected to make landfall in southwest Florida on Saturday.

Fred became the sixth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season late on Tuesday as it moved past the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

For the sixth year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expects that hurricane season will be far more active than normal.

A second, Tropical Storm Grace is expected to gather momentum this weekend and reach Florida by the middle of next week.

Fred formed in Puerto Rico on Tuesday and has been tearing through the Caribbean. As the storm tore through Haiti and the Dominican Republic, it led to a power outage for 400,000 people.

Storm-related flooding has forced officials to shut down part of the Dominican Republic’s aqueduct system, interrupting water service for hundreds of thousands of people.

Local officials reported hundreds of people were evacuated but there have been no deaths reported.

As of Friday, Fred was a tropical depression with sustained winds of less than 39mph.

Grace will move through the Leeward Islands on Saturday night, the Virgin Islands on Sunday, and Puerto Rico on Sunday night.

In a landmark report by the UN’s leading authority on climate change, scientists said that it’s likely that the amount of category three to five storms has increased over the past four decades. The report also said that the climate crisis will lead to more category 4 to 5 storms.

AP contributed to this report