ORLANDO, Fla. – Erin on Friday became the first named hurricane of the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, after data was collected from recon aircraft and the Automated Tropical Cyclone Forecasting System.
It has maximum sustained winds of 75 mph and steady to rapid strengthening is expected over the next two to three days. It is forecast to become a major hurricane during the weekend.
Erin has been a very interesting storm to track up to this point. It’s one of our first legitimate long-track features in a while.
Long-track simply means it splashed down off the west coast of Africa and immediately started to organize.
Last hurricane season, we had a few instances of these tropical waves that showed signs of development shortly after leaving the shores of Africa, but they immediately curved up toward the north before they could really cover some real estate across the Atlantic basin.
We’re fast approaching the fork in the road ahead. After 60W longitude, models become a little less confident in where Erin could take its turn away from the U.S. and how close or far it will stay.
Overnight, satellite structure of Erin looked “mint.” We had solid thunderstorms persistently firing up near the center of circulation, with very cold cloud tops evident on the infrared.
The colder your cloud tops are, the higher they are in the atmosphere. The higher they are usually suggests the more powerful they are. These blasts of storms near the core of a tropical feature are what keep its internal combustion motor running on all cylinders, allowing it to strengthen further.
[VIDEO BELOW: David Nazario takes close look at Erin]
That first burst of convection, as it’s called, has dissipated since Thursday evening. As the sun came up Friday morning, we saw these storms recycle and begin to ignite right around the center of Erin.
Current winds across the Atlantic when we glance at the deep layer suggest we still have some westward progress to make before a lift toward the north comes about.
Tropical systems, especially weaker ones, tend to follow the low-to-mid- level flow. So when you read or hear terms like “deep layer,” we’re looking at multiple slices of the atmospheric cake, if you will. This is the best way to look ahead in the short term where your storm is likely to go.
If you look at one slice alone, you might miss some of the extra details above and maybe below this point.
We’re starting to see the extension of a trough southward off the east coast of Canada, which will allow some weakening in our broad high pressure ridging extending west to east over the Atlantic into the eastern US. That should create a corridor to channel Erin north before it can make a run for the Southeast or the Mid-Atlantic.
At this point in time, we’re comfortable in saying Floridians can let off the gas peddle a bit despite some of the social media hearsay still in circulation. It would behoove you if you have friends, loved ones or anyone you know in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast to keep their eyes on Erin until we can see a clear shift away from any major coastline.
I am also anticipating additional tropical impacts for our friends to our south in the Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico. There will also be rough coastal conditions for the Dominican Republic.
From there, what’s next?
We’re still inside the active phase for the month of August. It appears if trends hold steady, we’ll see the Atlantic quiet back down toward the final days before turning the calendar to September.
Confidence is fairly high we’ll see one or two more named storm candidates from healthy tropical waves coming off the Africa coast. These will also bear watching over time, considering Erin will help to pull back our high pressure ridge into the western Atlantic once it makes its way north of Bermuda.