Early morning update (Wednesday) on Powerful Irma.
It is now the strongest landfall Hurricane in Atlantic basin since the great Labor Day hurricane in 1935 (tied) and raked across the tiny island of Barbuda.
Next up, the northern Virgin Islands, and just north of Puerto Rico soon.
It is still a strong CAT 5, with winds 185 mph,and pressure down to 914 mb. I'm interested to see if it hits 900 mb at some point in it's life and think it has a shot of doing so, if it remains north of Puerto Rico, rather than cutting directly over land. We'll see soon.
The tracks are becoming a little more clear, as guidance continues to cluster pretty tightly going forward, but if you are anywhere near it's path, either side of the Florida peninsula, don't let your guard down, but it's looking like less and less of a western side of Florida iimpact, and more and more like it approaches Southeast Florida in a few days.
The track questions grow further out in time obviously so we'll have to take it day by day, but most models are wanting to brush the eastern side of Florida, if not a direct hit, then turn due north up the East Coast (or just off East Coast of Florida)....the track there makes all the difference in the world for what awaits the Carolinas.
If she remains just barely offshore, or emerges quickly offshore after a hit near Miami, then she'll regain powerful CAT 4 or even CAT 5 status once again.
By Sunday, the European and GFS Global models both still have that weak ridge up over Michigan developing, blocking its north move some and forcing it to cut inland pretty quickly somewhere in southern South Carolina.
That kind of track is eerily similar to Hugo, but again, track errors this far out are huge, but overall, nothing much has changed as this has been a good possibility for days now....basically a hit or brush, in Florida,then north turn, then starting to turn back northwest early Next week, slamming the Carolinas, even well inland possibly, with an extremely powerful hurricane.
Again, all of this is still just educated guess work, if that, and hurricanes are notoriously hard to predict, even the best models are fooled many times. Steering flow will be weak in the Eastern US at that time, so where she goes this weekend means a lot as to where she winds up early next week. Its' still possible she makes that north turn just before a Florida impact , and keeps going north, just offshore, and remains offshore for good, but option is still pretty low and I'm getting more nervous of it lurching back inland to the northwest early next week. For now, Florida should be making plans for the arrival first, and pretty soon more of eastern Georgia and much of the Carolinas need to be thinking how they will prepare for the storm , if it comes north and then inland.
I will say that power outages will be to the extreme on this event and very, very widespread, where the center and east of the storm, goes Sunday through early next week. Keep that in mind because a storm of this magnitude will leaves its mark. Since speed is a factor, it doesn't look like tremendous flooding since it's on the move, but to make up for that, it will maintain its high winds much longer, even well inland, wherever it goes, and bring destruction in terms of downed trees and loss of power.
Image below is the newly released Hurricane Guidance Models, the official Track from Hurricane Center and the Satellite.
Topic: Irma becomes strongest Atlantic hurricane outside Gulf and Caribbean ever record (Read 2628 times)
