Tropical Storm Erin, on track to become the Atlantic season’s first full-fledged hurricane, will churn up dangerous surf and spawn riptides whether it hits land or not, forecasters said Wednesday.
Weather experts on the Leeward Islands — which include the British and U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and the Bahamas — were keeping close watch midweek as Erin lurched toward the Caribbean.
As of late Wednesday morning, Erin still had a “ragged overall appearance” and continued to “struggle to intensify,” the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. But over the next two days it will morph into a hurricane, then a major hurricane two days after that, reaching Category 3, the NHC said.
the size of the storm. (NOAA)
Wednesday afternoon, Erin was about a thousand miles east of the northern Leeward Islands, which include Puerto Rico, traveling west at about 20 mph with winds of about 45 mph.
While it would most likely stay a few hundred miles off the U.S. East Coast, forecasters said, it could also hit a weather pattern that sends it farther west.
“Erin should continue to track off to the west but eventually move north and northwest” after it passes just north of Puerto Rico’s main island, AccuWeather senior meteorologist Scott Homan told the Daily News. It could drop 1-2 inches of rain with 40-60 mph wind gusts, he added.
Erin’s effect on Bermuda, the U.S. and the Canadian Maritimes will depend on when it turns north and how much it intensifies, the NHC said. That point is subject to “variety of different meteorological factors,” Homan said.
Either way, Erin will produce “dangerous waves and rip currents up and down the East Coast all the way north into Maine” all next week, Homan said, cautioning beachgoers to take care.
Erin demonstrated its potential even as a barely formed tropical storm last weekend, unleashing fatal flash floods in Cabo Verde, about 470 miles off Dakar, Senegal.
The west African archipelago nation declared a state of emergency after at least nine people were killed and 1,500 displaced in “catastrophic” flooding after 7.6 inches of rain fell in five hours, Deputy Prime Minister Olavo Correia told BBC News. An untold number of people were missing amid frantic searches of decimated structures.
With News Wire Services
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