Hurricane Dolly (2008) the system to be a tropical storm—bypassing the tropical depression stage altogether—and giving it the name "Dolly". At this point, Dolly was located 270 mi (435 km) east of Chetumal, and 230 mi (365 km) southeast of Cozumel; the tropical storm was expected to make landfall later that day. At the time of Dolly's approach to Quintana Roo, 100,000 tourists were in the state, and 45,000 of them in Cancún. Originally, the storm was forecast by the Servicio Meteorológico Nacional (Mexico's national weather service) to make landfall between Playa del Carmen and Tulum. However, as the storm approached the Quintana
Hurricane Bertha (1996) occurred, and Bertha became a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, the first hurricane of the season, prior to moving through the northern Leeward Islands. Late on July 8, a period of rapid intensification began, and at 0600 UTC on July 9, Bertha reached its peak intensity with maximum sustained winds of with a minimum barometric pressure of . Moving around the western periphery of the subtropical ridge, Bertha passed north of the Bahamas as a weakening hurricane before turning towards the north-northeast and undergoing another period of rapid intensification. Late on July 12, Bertha made landfall between