After spending much of Tuesday as a minimal tropical storm, thunderstorms increased dramatically early Wednesday morning near and south of Erika's center of circulation.
Winds as of 11 a.m. were 45 mph. Further strengthening should be stopped or dampened by some dry air and increasing upper level wind shear, which beginning Wednesday afternoon and continuing Thursday is expected to be in the 15 to 25 knot range.
The storm is now less than 300 miles from crossing the Leeward Islands, where it's expected to arrive Wednesday night. The path would then take Erika's center across the Anegada Passage and into the British and U.S. Virgin Islands early on Thursday, then on to Culebra and very near the north coast of Puerto Rico. Tropical Storm Warnings are in effect for all of those islands. For the Dominican Republic the storm would pass about 80 kilometers from your north coast on Friday, and the main threat from Erika could be rain (which is sorely needed there as well as in the rest of the Caribbean).
Now on to the $64 million question: What happens next? The truth is no one knows. How can we not know? Because even though there's now an official NHC forecast for a landfalling hurricane in the Bahamas and Florida (the 1st time that's happened in Florida in 3 years), there is a wide spectrum of possible outcomes which range from complete dissipation in the Caribbean to a powerful hurricane over the open Atlantic away from land. The GFS operational run (plus the ESRL FIM and NASA GEOS-5) continues to weaken Erika into a tropical wave in the Greater Antilles, but the European operational run has gone back to forecasting a viable tropical cyclone through the Bahamas, and now into Florida.
This Euro operational run has not been consistent from run to run, and the average of the ensemble of several ECMWF runs points to dissipation. Other global models have varying ideas, ranging from the Canadian which passes a weak system through the Florida Straits or Keys, to the Navy model which brings a strong hurricane to the peninsula, to the Japanese model which doesn't strengthen her until she's moving north in the westernmost Bahamas. The specialized hurricane models are aggressive, strengthening Erika into a hurricane by this weekend. The HWRF places it near the east coast of Florida, but the GFDL has it as a "fish storm" safely north of the Bahamas.
So how can I help you make sense of all this? My best advice is to look more at the present condition and evolution of Erika instead of individual models. She's better equipped, due to a larger circulation, to withstand upper wind shear. There's not as much dry air as there was with Danny either. Watch how she behaves between Wednesday and Friday. If Erika reaches the waters east of the Bahamas as a tropical storm, then we may have our hands full in the Bahamas and Florida.
The waters in the Bahamas are very warm and Erika may have a chance to intensify more rapidly. The front that's in northern Florida Wednesday is expected to dissipate and the Bermuda high could nose back into the peninsula from the east. The next dip in the jet stream may be too far west to deflect Erika to the north in time to spare the state. Yes, models point to a stronger hurricane turning north just before reaching Florida, but right now it's too close to call. That said, Wednesday is the day start the first phase of preparations. To me that means doing the things you should've done at the beginning of hurricane season in June.
Local
Do you have a plan? Do you know if you live in an evacuation zone? How about supplies to protect and prepare for a hurricane? We're 4 or 5 days out, but IF it heads to Florida I want you to be prepared.
