How Florida could get slammed twice by Hurricane Matthew in one week
Just like with people, the history of tropical cyclones is replete with oddballs and eccentrics. Storms that for one reason or another just seemed to be listening to their own compass, rather than the larger jet stream around them, so to speak.
There was Hurricane Ophelia in 2005, which made two complete loops off the coast of the Southeastern United States in 2005. Then there was Hurricane Esther in 1961, which neared southern New England, turned around in a holding pattern like a jet approaching JFK Airport at rush hour, and then resumed its march toward land.
It appears that Hurricane Matthew, which is hammering the Bahamas with fierce winds and storm surge flooding and prompting massive evacuations in the Southeast, may join this elite pantheon of iconoclastic hurricanes.
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Since Wednesday morning, multiple computer models' storm track projections show Hurricane Matthew will hit Florida starting on Thursday, and then return for round two by early next week.
These simulations are credible, albeit unwelcome news in Florida, where a hurricane of Category 3 intensity or greater has not struck since 2005. So, what would drive a hurricane to behave like this?
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Hurricanes may be extremely powerful storms, but when it comes to their movement, they are like pebbles caught in a stream -- forced to move along with the prevailing currents. In the case of Hurricane Matthew, a cold front moving into the Northeast will bump the storm to the east on Saturday, preventing it from riding up the East Coast and hitting New York or Boston. However, a high pressure area building across the western Atlantic could then block its eastward progress.
This atmospheric traffic jam could direct the storm to the south, and then eventually it may be shunted westward in part by its interaction with Tropical Storm Nicole, and partly from encountering the easterly trade winds that blow just north of the equator.
The Global Forecast Model, or GFS, which is the top U.S. model, shows this scenario, as does the European model, which is the top performing model in the world, and the top performer so far with Hurricane Matthew.
There are some big caveats to the storm boomerang scenario, however.
First of all, Hurricane Matthew is unlikely to return to Florida as a Category 3 or greater storm, in part because wind shear may disrupt its circulation as it makes its turn to the south. Also, if the storm crosses its former path, it will find the ocean has a memory of it, and it's not a pleasant one either.
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That memory will be imprinted in the form of an area of cooler ocean waters that were stirred up by Hurricane Matthew's strong winds and towering waves, projected to be at least 40 feet high, the first time the storm was there.
This isn't to say that the storm won't pose a second threat to Florida, but rather that it may not be as serious of a threat as it is now.
The bottom line with hurricanes is that they're nature's most powerful, but temperamental storms. That's what makes them so fun to try to predict, but terrible to live through once, let alone twice.
Andrew Freedman is Mashable's Senior Editor for Science and Special Projects. Prior to working at Mashable, Freedman was a Senior Science writer for Climate Central. He has also worked as a reporter for Congressional Quarterly and Greenwire/E&E Daily. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, online at The Weather Channel, and washingtonpost.com, where he wrote a weekly climate science column for the "Capital Weather Gang" blog. He has provided commentary on climate science and policy for Sky News, CBC Radio, NPR, Al Jazeera, Sirius XM Radio, PBS NewsHour, and other national and international outlets. He holds a Masters in Climate and Society from Columbia University, and a Masters in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School at Tufts University.
