Posted on 09/22/2022 6:10:19 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Hurricane Fiona (was) the strongest hurricane of the Atlantic season, and now forecast models show a developing storm could become a MONSTROUS threat to the US Gulf Coast by next week.
An area of disorganized activity a couple hundred miles east of the the eastern reaches of the Caribbean Sea will likely become the next tropical depression — named Hermine — in the next few days, maybe even the next few hours, according to the National Hurricane Center.
This small cluster of storms has meteorologists’ attention because both American and European forecasting models have consistently showed them developing into a tropical system and entering into the Gulf of Mexico — though the models don’t have the best track record when forecasting that far out.
“The fact that nearly every computer model out there develops this into a westward-moving hurricane is absolutely concerning,” CNN meteorologist Chad Myers said.
There’s a 70% chance it becomes a tropical depression within the next 48 hours, and there’s a 90% chance of development within the next five days, the hurricane center says. So development is likely — but where it’s going is still somewhat up for debate.
“Well, there’s a lot of uncertainty right now,” Maria Torres, hurricane center spokesperson, told CNN. “But yes, it’s something that we are keeping an eye on and that we are closely monitoring as we get into the weekend and early next week.”
Over the next several days, the disturbance is forecast to move west-northwestward across the southern Windward Islands — at the Caribbean’s eastern edge — and then move toward the central Caribbean Sea later in the week, the hurricane center said Wednesday morning.
By late next week, both models show the storm entering the Gulf of Mexico.
The American model shows the storm as a large and possibly major hurricane. It shows it making landfall in the Panhandle of Florida by September 30. The European model has it hitting the southern section of Florida a day earlier but as a much smaller but nearly as intense storm.
If the storm system makes it into the Gulf like the forecast models say, the conditions are ripe for development.
“The water is extremely warm, and the atmosphere is very conducive for rapid development,” Myers said.
The conditions in the Gulf of Mexico are favorable for the system to strengthen, and it will do that very rapidly, Torres told CNN.
It has been a slow start to what was forecast to be an above-average hurricane season. Only one storm has made landfall in a US territory, and no hurricane has made landfall or threatened the contiguous United States.
Now, a week past the peak of hurricane season, the tropics seem to have woken up, and forecasters are concerned people have let down their guard.
“After a slow start, the Atlantic hurricane season has ratcheted up quickly,” Phil Klotzbach, research scientist at Colorado State University (CSU), tweeted.
“People tend to lower their guard and think, oh, yeah, we’re out of the woods,” Torres said. “But in reality, the season continues. We are still in September; we still have October to go. Anything that forms over either the Atlantic or the Caribbean is something that we need to keep monitoring very closely.”
The Atlantic hurricane season ends November 30.
Four times a day, the American forecast model and the European model spit out an updated forecast. And after each run, meteorologists will tweet what they think will happen.
No matter what, if you live in the Caribbean, Florida and other states along the Gulf Coast, pay attention and watch what the National Hurricane Center says once the storm is strong enough to be named. The track that it issues at that time will give an increasingly good indication of what is most likely to happen.
You forgot “wearing a dress”
No need to worry, there’s a Democrat in office now, won’t be a bad storm... See:
5 years on, failures from Hurricane Maria loom large as Puerto Rico responds to Fiona https://www.npr.org/2022/09/20/1123846384/puerto-rico-hurricane-fiona-hurricane-maria-anniversary
The idiot mayor of San Juan thinks solar power will solve any future problems...
So all of a sudden a new phrase appeared and was reported on. "Named storms". "Number of named storms at historic high!" stuff like that. Propeganda restored.
But people get that named storms is BS. And we see it here, they are at the point where they have to say "THIS named storm is actually a big one".
I did that. Just to be sarcastic. And I was too lazy to re-format the whole piece, LOL! ;)
Supposed to have Fiona brush by us to the east this weekend, but only a category one or two.
Exactly. And they’ve started naming Snow Storms, for Pete’s Sake!
*Rolleyes*
…forecast models show a developing storm could become a minuscule threat to the US Gulf Coast by next week.
Hermine was used in 2016- have they already run out of new ‘H’ names in 6 years?
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/index.php?season=2016&basin=atl
Newsom in Cali just passed a new law...they are now gonna name HEAT WAVES!!.......not kidding.
At the rate things are going, every breeze will have a name.
Next, he'll be naming power outages.
Oooo....Weather Porn!
Scaring the readers leads to more clicks. More clicks = more revenue.
What would happen if we all stopped playing their game and didn’t click when the headline was so obviously inflammatory?
I read recently that five day forecasts are fairly reliable. Anything after that is total guesswork.
Maybe they could drop planeloads of anti depressants into the tropical depression.
Judson Jones and Jennifer Gray, CNN meteorologists
They KNOW, beware!
They sure are getting their hopes up.
Not familiar with that term.
In any case it captures the writer’s intent.
Yep, will be interesting to see, the reaction to a hurricane since a good Democrat is president.
We all recall how Katrina was blamed on Bush. And the media worked hard in 2017 to make Hurricane Maria into “Trump’s Katrina”. But it didn’t work too well.
Since the early 1950’s all hurricanes have been assigned names, from the very strongest of hurricanes to storms that just barely reached hurricane strength.
The naming process has nothing at all to do with Katrina.
Once a tropical storm reaches sustained winds of >74 mph, it is a hurricane, that was the case in 1958 and is the case in 2022.
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