2023-09-09 04:36:25
ATLANTA — Hurricane Lee is rewriting the rules of meteorology, leaving experts amazed at how quickly it developed into a monster Category 5 hurricane.
Lee might also be a dire harbinger of what might come as ocean temperatures rise, spawning fast-growing major hurricanes that might threaten communities further north and inland, experts say .
“Hurricanes become stronger at higher latitudes,” says Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgia’s atmospheric sciences program and past president of the American Mogenic Society.
“If this trend continues, it will put places like Washington, DC, New York and Boston at risk,” he fears.
Hyper-intensification
As oceans warm, they serve as fuel for hurricanes.
“This extra heat comes back at some point, and one of the ways this happens is through stronger hurricanes,” Shepherd said.
Overnight Thursday, Lee shattered the norm for what meteorologists consider rapid intensification — when a hurricane’s sustained winds increase by 35 mph in 24 hours.
“It increased by 129 km/h,” underlines Mr. Shepherd. I can’t stress this enough: We had this mark of 56 km/h, and here’s a storm that’s growing more than twice that, and we’re seeing it happen more frequently,” says Shepherd, describing what happened with Lee as a “hyper-intensification”.
With extremely warm ocean temperatures and low wind shear, “all the stars were aligned for the atmosphere to intensify rapidly,” says Kerry Emanuel, professor emeritus of atmospheric sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Internal threats
Category 5 status — when sustained winds blow at least 253 km/h — is quite rare. About 4.5 percent of named storms in the Atlantic Ocean have moved to Category 5 over the past decade, calculates Brian McNoldy, a scientist and hurricane researcher at the University of Miami.
More intense major hurricanes also threaten communities further inland, as monster storms can become so powerful that they remain dangerous hurricanes for longer distances over land.
“Because these storms are strong when they make landfall, in some cases they move fast enough to remain hurricanes well inland,” notes Shepherd.
Hurricane Idalia was the latest example, when it made landfall in the Florida Panhandle last month. It was still a hurricane when it entered southern Georgia.
It then struck the Georgia town of Valdosta, more than 70 miles (116 kilometers) from where it made landfall. At least 80 homes in the Valdosta area were destroyed and hundreds more damaged.
In 2018, Hurricane Michael carved a similar path of destruction inland, destroying cotton and pecan crops and causing widespread damage in southern Georgia.
Risk for New England
Although it’s too early to know how close Lee might come to the U.S. East Coast, New Englanders are keeping a watchful eye on the storm as some models predict it will come dangerously close from this region, particularly Maine. It’s been 69 years since a major hurricane made landfall in New England, Mr. McNoldy points out.
On September 8, 1869, a Category 3 hurricane known as the “September 1869 Gale” struck Rhode Island, the National Weather Service in Boston noted Friday. The storm cut all telegraph lines between Boston and New York and capsized a schooner, killing 11 crew members.
Forecasters will be watching for any possible interactions in the coming days between Lee and new Tropical Storm Margot, which is expected to strengthen into a hurricane next week.
It’s possible that Margot will change Lee’s path, although it’s too early to know if that will happen, experts say.
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