ORLANDO, FLa. – Tracking Erin has been both a rollercoaster of emotions and brain power.
The storm itself has felt much of the same over the last two days, having ballooned up to a Category 5 hurricane in the span of 18 to 24 hours, and then being punched down a few notches thanks to the environment it finds itself in Tuesday morning.
When you take a comparison of the storm over the weekend compared to where we find it now, you may ask yourself - what happened!?
Another enormous question I’ve seen across the internet is, why is it moving SO SLOW?
Let’s talk about all of that.
Vertical wind shear has increased over top the storm, cutting down the cloud tops like a buzz saw would chop down a tree. The same feature that helped to ventilate the storm, or give it a good exhaust set up during its time north of the Leeward islands and Puerto Rico, is now helping squash Erin back beneath major hurricane status.
Working hand-in-hand with this increase in wind shear is a batch of continental dry air from up north now flowing into the core of the storm.
In previous articles I’ve mentioned something called the “tropical lottery.” We’ve witnessed both sides of the coin in Erin’s case.
Erin initially won this lottery when it started to make its trek north of the Greater Antilles, which allowed it to virtually explode into our first hurricane of the season and tie with last year’s Beryl for the first hurricane of the season intensifying to Category 5 strength.
Now, we’re winning that lottery: dry air and shear are acting to weaken the storm and dramatically.
But, I’ve also said with Mother Nature, everything is a give and take. So as a result of the storm weakening, the most basic of physics that keep the center so tightly wrapped up are now working against folks in the Turks and Caicos islands, the Bahamas and eventually the Mid-Atlantic states.
When you have a smaller system spinning at such a FAST rate, the strongest winds and impacts are closest to the center. The wind field is small, but vicious.
The same can be said for the most powerful thunderstorms and heaviest rainfall being confined directly to the center of the storm. This helps a hurricane build symmetry and rapidly intensify.
You’ve probably read just about EVERYWHERE by now that Erin is getting bigger.
This is both a good thing and a maybe not-so-good thing in the short term. While Erin is expected to grow in size, the primary reason it’s doing so is a result of its weakening. We saw the exact same thing happen with Category 5 Hurricane Lee of the 2023 season. The storm never quite recovered from there, although models expected it to rebound back to Category 5 status.
Because of this expansion, tropical storm force winds are likely to impact the coast of the Carolinas up toward the Chesapeake Bay area of Virginia. We’ll be seeing heavy coastal conditions here in Central Florida, so if you still have some time off, a friendly recommendation would be to head for the Gulf Coast if you plan to get a little sun in at the beach.
A quick note on why Erin is being so stubborn as well. It’s barely moving!
The system has reached a neutral point in the general steering flow called a COL. A col is the separation between different air masses across a geographic point where you find light and variable winds. No discernible direction or intensity.
This is also a contributor to why Erin is going to grow so large. There isn’t much acting on it to keep the core tightly compact, as well as the dry air/wind shear giving it a two-piece combo like a pro boxer.
Believe it or not, the winds around the storm as well as the rotation of the Earth and the latitude with which it’s found contribute to a hurricane taking on the shape that it does. Physics at its finest.
It is still forecast to lift northward once it escapes this col, and then turn away after being reabsorbed into the jet stream pattern in the North Atlantic.