I apologize for no diary yesterday. I had hoped to do one at the 11 am advisory, but there was more cleanup and stuff to do around my mom’s house than I thought at first. The good news is she’s settled in at home and all is well with her.
I’m not going to attempt a damage and recovery diary here. Please follow Denise Oliver Velez for her excellent coverage. I’ll only say that Dominica took a devastating blow, St. Croix avoided the worst of the core but still was hit very hard, and Puerto Rico we are barely beginning to understand how bad it is. The people of all these islands desperately need our help. They need it fast but they’ll also need it for a long time. This has been a hell of a hurricane season and it ain’t over yet. It seems like ages ago, but Texas is still fully involved in recovering from Harvey. Much of the Leeward Islands, Turks and Caicos, the southeastern Bahamas, Cuba and Florida are still in the beginning stages of recovery from Irma. And now Dominica, St. Croix, Puerto Rico and once again the Turks and Caicos are barely beginning the assessment stage of damage from Maria.
Hurricane Maria was significantly weakened by crossing Puerto Rico. It fairly quickly recovered it’s structure and developed a large eye, approximately 40 nautical miles in diameter. This is a normal occurrence — storms that are not completely disrupted by land tend to emerge weakened but with an expanded wind field. The central pressure rose to 960 mb and maximum sustained winds declined to 115 mph. The storm appears to have been slowed in its recovery by crossing the cold wake of Hurricane Irma so there was some good news for the Turks and Caicos in that they got the open southwest quadrant of the eyewall.
Maria has now entered warmer waters north of Irma’s wake and is showing signs of reintensifying, with very intense convection forming in the northern half of the eyewall.. Here are the stats from the 11 am advisory:
11:00 AM EDT Fri Sep 22
Location: 22.3°N 71.0°W
Moving: NW at 8 mph
Min pressure: 958 mb
Max sustained: 125 mph
Maria is expected to stay east of the Bahamas over the next couple of days. Some additional strengthening is possible, but in the longer run southwesterly shear and cooler waters are expected to weaken it as moves near or offshore of the Outer Banks.
While the model consensus keeps Maria offshore from the US east coast, a handful (7) of the ECMWF ensemble members make landfall and quite a few are pretty close offshore. There’s probably about a 10% chance of landfall in the vicinity of the Outer Banks and maybe about a 35% chance the storm passes near enough that the OB sees tropical storm force conditions.
Here are the ensembles fro the overnight run of the ECMWF:
and this morning’s run of the GFS:
That sharp ENE turn is due to a trough arriving and picking up the storm and is a high confidence forecast at this point, so it’s pretty certain that there won’t be any extensive impact on the US east coast.
I’ll be updating this diary during the afternoon if there are any significant developments.