Tropical trouble brewing for Bahamas, Puerto Rico and Southeastern U.S.
UPDATE: Aug. 23, 2016, 3:30 p.m. EDT Computer models are giving forecasters little clarity on Tuesday, as a hurricane hunter recon flight turned up no closed low at the center of the storm.
Therefore, it remains an open tropical wave, with a high degree of uncertainty as to its track, intensity and the magnitude of its ultimate threat to the Southeast. The European model, which is generally more reliable than the American GFS, is predicting the storm will develop into a strong hurricane and enter the Gulf of Mexico during the next seven days.
The GFS, on the other hand, is showing virtually no further development of the weather system at all. So, best to watch closely and wait at this point...
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We're near the peak of hurricane season, and activity in the Atlantic Ocean is heating up quickly.
One tropical system which, as of Tuesday morning was known as a tropical wave, could soon become tropical storm Hermine as it heads west-northwest toward the Bahamas and Puerto Rico.
Farther out into the Atlantic is a Cape Verde-type tropical storm, named Gaston. Cape Verde storms form far in the eastern Atlantic, from tropical waves coming off equatorial Africa and are so named because of their proximity to Cape Verde, on the west coast of Africa.
These types of storms have a long history of turning fierce and violent as they spin westward for days, eventually hitting Caribbean nations, the U.S. or recurving out to sea. At the moment, Gaston is many days away from threatening any land mass and is likely to curve out to sea before getting near the U.S. or Bermuda.
Some computer model runs are projecting ominous scenarios for the Southeastern U.S. this weekend and into next week due to what may eventually grow into Hurricane Hermine.
The National Hurricane Center, which dispatched a reconnaissance aircraft into the tropical wave on Tuesday morning, is giving the system a "moderate" chance of developing into a named storm during the next five days.
Computer models are not unanimous in either developing this tropical wave (known to weather geeks as "Invest 99L") into a tropical storm or hurricane, but they are clear that any such storm would be steered westward, into the Bahamas and Florida due to a developing area of high pressure across the East Coast of the U.S.
At this point, the only thing that's clear is that the weather system is a threat that the tens of millions of Americans who live in the Southeastern U.S. should start monitoring closely.
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Some computer models show the storm intensifying significantly during the next several days before making landfall in north-central Florida on Sunday or Monday, traversing the state and reemerging in the Gulf of Mexico early next week.
However, storm track and especially intensity forecasts this far in advance have a high degree of uncertainty.
If the storm were to make landfall in Florida as a hurricane, it would be the first such storm to do so since 2005 -- ending a record-long hurricane drought that may have made many coastal residents complacent about the threat of such a storm.
There are now 307,245 more people living in Miami-Dade county alone, for example, compared to 2005.
Michael Lowry, a hurricane specialist with The Weather Channel who previously worked at the National Hurricane Center and also served for a time as an emergency management official in Florida, says social science research shows that people who are unfamiliar with hurricanes don't necessarily respond more poorly than those that have been through such storms before.
In fact, he's more worried that if a major storm were to threaten a state like Florida, where a big one has not hit in more than a decade, there could be an overreaction.
“[It's] More of my concern with the fact that there’s been so long since there’s been a hurricane is less that people won’t move, but more that people will move that don’t need to move. More of an overreaction," he said in an interview with Mashable. This could lead to clogged highways and prevent the people who absolutely need to leave from leaving.
This story is developing.
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.
