Maria Finally Departs the Caribbean and Jose Fades. Whats Next?

Good Evening

Back on Monday we highlighted the potential for Maria to become an extremely dangerous Category 4 or even 5 Hurricane before reaching the small island of Dominica in the Lesser Antilles, and unfortunately that is exactly what happened. Maria rapidly intensified into a Category 5 hurricane with 160 mph winds just before making landfall on the small island, and then preceded to head from SE to NW, leaving the entire island in its core for at least three hours. The storm was the second Category 5 land falling hurricane this season, tying the 2007 with Dean a Felix. Details are still very spotty, but the pictures, video, and first-hand accounts of Dominica are heart-breaking. Most, if not all of the homes on the island have suffered severe damage, with some houses being completely destroyed. Due to the topography of the island, devastating mud slides and land slides were common, which swept away homes, roads, and well-built concrete structures. Its hard to believe that we’d have a storm that would rival the total devastation that Hurricane Irma caused just a few weeks ago, but we could be looking at yet another situation  where an entire island community has seen complete devastation. With the peak of the Cape Verde season quickly coming to a climatotlogical end, we should see the frequency of storms impacting this region begin to wind down, but I would not be surprised to see one or two more systems during the month of October given the active state that we are currently in.

Damage from Hurricane Maria when it hit the island of Dominica as a Category 5 hurricane with winds of up to 160 miles per hour (Credit: The Guardian)

Damage from Hurricane Maria when it hit the island of Dominica as a Category 5 hurricane with winds of up to 160 miles per hour (Credit: The Guardian)

Due to the high, mountainous peak of Dominica and the amount of time that Maria spent traversing the island, the inner eyewall of the storm become disrupted and fractured, but not for long. On Tuesday the storm began to rapidly regain strength after dropping to a Category 4 hurricane. Recon missions throughout the day found that the storm had an incredibly compact eye of around 5-8 nautical miles and the winds rose from 155 mph to 175 mph during the course of the day, with the pressure falling to an incredible 908 millibars, making the storm the tenth strongest on record for the Atlantic basin.

Recon also released numerous dropsonde instruments which provide a vertical profile of various locations in the storm, and some of these probes happened to measure extreme winds of around 190-195 mph at the surface, but it is not certain whether these were instantaneous gusts or actually representative of the storms strength. Regardless, the storm began to approach the US Virgin islands late in the day on Tuesday and into the evening. Very deep convection began to develop quite rapidly around the center of the storm, and before long, concentric eye walls began to develop. This marked that the storm was about to attempt an eyewall replacement cycle before hitting Puerto Rico. It was clear that the storm would have issues completing this process and then intensifying once again due to the storms intensity and the size of the outer eyewall, but it also signaled for new dangers to arise. The storms wind field grew quite substantially as it approached Puerto Rico early Wednesday morning, causing the carious weather stations to be blown apart in addition to both weather radars on the island.

The storm raged ashore with winds in the 155 mph range, making Maria a strong Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Maria went on to produce prolific flooding, wind damage, and cut a path of carnage across the island that would send all of its inhabitants into darkness as all of the power facilities went down during the storm. Details are also still rolling in slowly on the extent of the damage to the island, but it may be safe to say that the Puerto Rico that existed before Maria is no longer there. Estimates say that power may not be restored to some portions of the island for possibly up to 4-6 months. Additionally, much of the infrastructure will need to be rebuilt, which will be a daunting task in of itself. The next few weeks and months may be quite rough for the locals, but with resilience and endurance the people of the island will be able to overcome this disaster and restore their home to levels greater than before Maria.

GOES 16 imagery of Hurricane Maria making landfall on the island of Puerto Rico with winds of up to 155 miles per hour

GOES 16 imagery of Hurricane Maria making landfall on the island of Puerto Rico with winds of up to 155 miles per hour

Maria has since left the Caribbean, and land interaction along with an increase in vertical wind shear have been affecting the system. The storm weakened down to a Category 2 on Thursday, but has since regained some strength and is now a 125 mph Category 3 hurricane. The storm is currently located very close to the Turks and Caicos, producing winds up to tropical storm force on the islands along with torrential rainfall as it slowly heads NNW at around nine miles per hour. Maria should keep this heading over the weekend and into the early portion of next week, but some key aspects of this forecast remain in question. While it is quite likely Maria misses the United States, the American model has been trending strong with the riding out ahead of Maria in the past few runs, bringing the storm precariously close to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Again, such a solution looks unlikely right now, but with the remnants of Jose still meandering around, we truly will not know just how close the storm passes to the east coast before it makes its famed passage out to sea.

Trend loop of the GFS model showing the westward trend over the past 5 runs (Courtesy of TropicalTidbits)

Trend loop of the GFS model showing the westward trend over the past 5 runs (Courtesy of TropicalTidbits)

So What Else? 

Well, we have the remnants of tropical storm Jose which has finally become post-tropical after 70 advisories by the National Hurricane Center. For reference, this storm has been ongoing since Hurricane Irma was north of Hispaniola! The remnants of this storm should gradually dissipate over the next few days and really should not be much of a threat besides increased wave action and showers. Elsewhere, Tropical Storm Lee has come back to life after shedding about three different low level circulations over the past three days and is located well out in the open Atlantic, just east of a large upper level low. Lee is an extraordinarily small system and is reminiscent of Hurricane Michael from 2012 in that of it is relying heavily on baroclinic process to form convection and strengthen. Given its size and the upper level conditions, I would give the storm a higher than normal odds of becoming a small hurricane over the next few days.

Lastly, our eyes turn to the western Caribbean as the month of September begins to fade. Medium and long range models are showing that this area of the Atlantic basin may become much more active during the next few weeks as a large area of upper level divergence sets up right over extremely warm sea surface temperatures of around 31-32 Celsius. This upper level divergence over very warm waters would promote a large amount of deep convection to form, which could eventually lower pressures in the Caribbean and cause a tropical system to form. This is all at least 8-12 days out at this point, but the signals are there that we should begin to monitor this region for potential tropical cyclone development as we near the beginning of October.

I will have a full update on Maria and any other threat that may pop up on Monday!

ECMWF model showing large scale rising over the western Caribbean in about 10 days. Conditions could become quite favorable for tropical cyclone genesis by this time.

ECMWF model showing large scale rising over the western Caribbean in about 10 days. Conditions could become quite favorable for tropical cyclone genesis by this time.

Have an excellent weekend!

Steven Copertino

Jose Impacts on the New England & Mid-Atlantic Coasts

Happy Tuesday! Hurricane Jose remains well offshore. But will still have some relatively minor impacts over coastal parts of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic over the next few days or so. Meanwhile, more attention has turned to Hurricane Maria which has become extremely powerful Category 5 hurricane, as moved over Dominica last night. Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands may take a direct hit from by Wednesday. But this article, will mostly discuss impacts from Jose

Based on latest observations and model guidance, Hurricane Jose will be tracking further southeast of the 40/70 benchmark, than previously expected. So only some outer fringe rain and wind impacts are expected for most coastal areas of between the Delmarva and New England through Wednesday. Showers and breezy conditions are generally expected, as outer rainbands from Jose push inland from off the ocean. Some locally heavier downpours with possibly higher wind gusts to around 40mph, especially along the New Jersey, Delaware and Long Island shores. But true tropical storm conditions aren’t largely anticipated.

Read more

Extremely Dangerous Maria Eyes Dominica

Good Evening! 

Back on Friday we were talking about a vigorous tropical wave that was designated Invest 96L. Since that time, the disturbance became a tropical depression on Saturday, battled with some moderate shear and dry air, and was upgraded to a hurricane yesterday afternoon. We mentioned that the storm would have excellent conditions to intensify once it was nearing the islands, and that’s what Maria did, but to a whole different level. Since this morning, the storm has intensified into an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane with winds up to 130 mph as of the 5pm advisory by the National Hurricane Center. The storm has an incredible satellite presentation, characterized by a small pinhole eye, extremely deep convection surrounding the center, and good to excellent outflow in all quadrants. Earlier reports from a reconnaissance plane showed that the pressures within the storm were falling quite steadily, but the plane finished its mission just before Maria’s eye began to clear out an warm. Since that time, the eye continues to become increasingly defined, and satellite estimates are indicating that the storm may be stronger than the 130 mph intensity that it was given.

Natural color imagery provided by GOES 16 and CIRA Colorado State

Natural color imagery provided by GOES 16 and CIRA Colorado State

At the time of this post, Maria is only about two hours or so from making a direct landfall on the small island of Dominica, which is home to some 70,000 people (2016 estimate). The last time the island saw a similar threat from a hurricane was way back in 1979 when Hurricane David made a direct landfall, which devastated the island, leaving nearly 75% of the population homeless, and wiping out a majority of the Banana and Coconut crops which the islands relies on for profit. With Maria having such a tight and intense core (8-10 nm miles), this will make the next few hours of watching the radar out of Martinique crucial. If the center goes right over the island, we could see a catastrophic scene similar to what happened on Barbuda with Hurricane Irma just about two weeks ago. We will have another reconnaissance plane within Maria by 7-8pm eastern time, which should give us an exact estimate on the intensity of the storm as well as any wobbles it may take. It is quite likely that Maria will be at least somewhat stronger than the 130 mph estimate by the time the mission arrives, and I would not be surprised to see the storm near 150-160 mph by 11pm eastern time.

Radar loop out of the island of Martinique showing the motion of extremely dangerous Hurricane Maria with 130 mph winds (MeteoFrance)

Radar loop out of the island of Martinique showing the motion of extremely dangerous Hurricane Maria with 130 mph winds (MeteoFrance)

After Maria moves through the islands, we then look to the US virgin islands and Puerto Rico for likely impacts from the storm. While the peaks of the islands may briefly disrupt Maria if it does indeed make a direct landfall, Maria will still have all of Tuesday and a good portion of Wednesday to reorganize or restrengthen over the very warm water of the Caribbean. The storm has a very powerful upper level anticyclone, which is allowing massive amount of air to be evacuated from the system, which should keep the system healthy over the next 48 hours. If Maria does not weaken due to the islands this evening, than it is possible that it could continue to strengthen until the tiny eye that it has collapses and has to undergo an eyewall replacement cycle. This could temporarily weaken the storm, but as we saw with Irma, it also expands the windfield of the storm quite a bit, which then leads to even greater surge concerns.

The people of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands should be preparing for an intense hurricane to impact the area as soon as Wednesday afternoon with sustained winds up to 150mph, rainfall in the 10-16″ range, extremely dangerous storm surge, extreme wave action, and the potential for deadly mudslides. This is an extremely dangerous storm, and it should not be taken lightly. A hurricane warning is in effect for the entire region, and the track over the next 24 hours will determine whether or not Puerto Rico sees a direct impact from this system, but should be preparing for one regardless.

***Please monitor all information from your local weather service, the National Hurricane Center, local officials and news outlets over the next few days as this extremely dangerous storm enters the Caribbean.***

This afternoons HWRF model showing Maria impacting the US virgin islands and coming extremely close to Puerto Rico

This afternoons HWRF model showing Maria impacting the US virgin islands and coming extremely close to Puerto Rico

The long term forecast for Maria becomes quite complicated after the storm passes north of Hispaniola, as the remnants of Jose will likely make another loop after being deflected off a a building ridge to its north. This will likely create a weakness for Maria to continue moving north, but the extent and duration of this northward movement will be highly dependent on the strength of Jose as well as the ridge to its north. Additionally, this afternoons global models as well as their ensembles have showed Maria making it closer to the US mainland as the remnants of Jose weaken considerably faster, which allows the potential weakness to close up much quicker. We likely will not know what Maria’s fate will be until after it impacts the Virgin islands/ Puerto Rico in the coming days, so make sure to check back on Wednesday when we’ll have a full update on Maria!

The afternoons GFS model showing the leftover weakness caused by Jose eventually determining the track of Maria

The afternoons GFS model showing the leftover weakness caused by Jose eventually determining the track of Maria

For more information and posts like this one, make sure you sign up for Premium Forecasts — where multiple detailed articles, videos, and interactives are posted each day. Also, come interact with our staff and many other weather enthusiasts at 33andrain.com!

Have a great evening!

Steve Copertino

Hurricane Maria’s Track May Depend on Jose

In what seems to be about day seven hundred in an endless cycle of Tropical news, we have plenty more to talk about. Hurricane Maria underwent rapid intensification last night, strengthening from a Category 1 to a Category 3 storm. It developed a very tight core with a rapid increase of lightning around the center — a classic foreboding of rapid intensification. This intensification has continued throughout the day, as it has now become a Category 4 hurricane with 130mph winds. This was evident because a classic pinhole eye opened up, reminiscent of some of the strongest hurricanes, such as Hurricane Gilbert. It is looking like Puerto Rico will take a direct hit from Maria, as perhaps a Category 4 or even 5 hurricane. Afterward, there is a lot of spread in potential outcomes, though the general pattern at large does signal a landfall somewhere along the East Coast. But a big variable will be how the remnants of Jose behave, something that will be very hard to forecast.

Read more