A hur­ri­cane watch was is­sued for St. Lu­cia as Trop­i­cal Storm Bret bar­reled to­ward the east­ern Caribbean Thurs­day at near-hur­ri­cane strength.

The storm was lo­cat­ed about 170 miles (265 kilo­me­ters) east of Bar­ba­dos on Thurs­day morn­ing and was mov­ing west at 15 mph (24 kph). It had max­i­mum sus­tained winds of 70 mph (110 kph), just be­low the 74 mph (119 kph) winds of a Cat­e­go­ry 1 hur­ri­cane.

Air­ports, busi­ness­es, schools and of­fices were clos­ing in St. Lu­cia and Do­mini­ca as fore­cast­ers warned of tor­ren­tial down­pours, land­slides and flood­ing.

“Pro­tect your lives, prop­er­ty and liveli­hoods,” urged St. Lu­cia Prime Min­is­ter Philip Pierre.

A trop­i­cal storm warn­ing was in ef­fect for Do­mini­ca, St. Lu­cia and Mar­tinique, while a trop­i­cal storm watch was is­sued for Bar­ba­dos and St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines. The storm was ex­pect­ed to start af­fect­ing is­lands in the east­ern Caribbean late Thurs­day, ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter in Mi­a­mi.

An­dre Joyeux, di­rec­tor of St. Lu­cia’s Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vices, said Bret is ex­pect­ed to cut di­rect­ly through the is­land.

“So we are hop­ing that per­sons take heed,” he said.

Up to 10 inch­es (3 cen­time­ters) of rain fore­cast for the French Caribbean is­land of Guade­loupe south to St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos, the hur­ri­cane cen­ter said. Waves of up to 13 feet (4 me­ters) al­so were fore­cast for Guade­loupe, ac­cord­ing to lo­cal me­te­o­rol­o­gists.

Bret is ex­pect­ed to lose strength once it en­ters the east­ern Caribbean Sea, and it is fore­cast to dis­si­pate by Sat­ur­day.

How­ev­er, the Caribbean is close­ly watch­ing a trop­i­cal de­pres­sion that is trail­ing Bret and has a 90% chance of for­ma­tion. Ear­ly fore­casts ex­pect it to be­come Trop­i­cal Storm Cindy on Thurs­day and take a path north­east of the Caribbean through open wa­ters.

If the de­pres­sion strength­ens in­to a storm, it would be the first time since record-keep­ing be­gan that two storms form in the trop­i­cal At­lantic in June, ac­cord­ing to me­te­o­rol­o­gist Philip Klotzbach at Col­orado State Uni­ver­si­ty.

The Na­tion­al Ocean­ic and At­mos­pher­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion has fore­cast 12 to 17 named storms for this year’s hur­ri­cane sea­son. It said be­tween five and nine of those storms could be­come hur­ri­canes, in­clud­ing up to four ma­jor hur­ri­canes of Cat­e­go­ry 3 or high­er.

SAN JUAN, Puer­to Ri­co (AP) —