Hurricane Season is Awake

The National Hurricane Center does warn that Erin isn’t done with us just yet. As it tracks to the north and then east it will produce “life-threatening surf and rip-currents” along beaches in the Bahamas as well as “much of the East Coast of the US,” extending up into Canada as well. Though it won’t do much more, Erin has offered a nice demonstration of how different the tropical cyclone regime is these days: on Friday morning it had 75-mph winds; less than 24 hours later, that number was 160 mph. That’s almost triple the rate required to meet the threshold for “rapid intensification,” a gain of at least 35 mph in wind speed across one day.

Rapidly intensifying storms have become the norm in recent years, as the dramatically warmer waters climate change has given us provide ready fuel for spinning cyclones. Harvey, Irma, Maria, Michael, Ian, Milton, others — all met the threshold since 2017, and all then hit US land with at times devastating impacts. Studies have borne this out, finding incremental increases in intensification rates over the past few decades. Erin’s intensification makes it one of the fastest in recorded history, and potentially the fastest intensifying storm before September 1, ever.

And right behind Erin is another storm, as of yet unnamed, following more or less in the record setter’s footsteps. It is tracking slightly to the south of Erin’s path, though, meaning it might threaten some Caribbean islands where the previous hurricane danced around them to the north. Though sometimes large storms can churn up the ocean behind them enough to bring cold water up from the deep and make it a bit tougher for the next storm to form, the NHC says the waters are “conducive for gradual development.” There is now a 50 percent chance this next offering becomes a tropical storm within the week.

We are still about three weeks away from the historical peak of hurricane season.