The imminent approach of Tropical Storm Erika prompted the issuance of watches and warnings for locations in the northeastern Caribbean Sea.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Tuesday the center of Tropical Storm Erika was located at latitude 16.0\u00b0N and longitude 54.4\u00b0W which put it about 495 miles (800 km) east of Antigua and about 1780 miles (2870 km) east-southeast of Miami, Florida.\u00a0 Erika was moving toward the west at 18 m.p.h. (30 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 40 m.p.h. (65 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 50 m.p.h. (80 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 1006 mb.\u00a0 Tropical Storm Warnings have been issued for Anguilla, Saba, St. Eustatius, and St. Maarten.\u00a0 Tropical Storm Watches have been issued for Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Montserrat, Antigua, Barbuda, St. Kitts, Nevis, Guadeloupe, St. Martin and St. Barthelemy.<\/p>\n
For much of Monday the circulation around Tropical Storm Erika consisted of a large swirl of low level clouds and a few thunderstorms well to the southeast of the center.\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure rose several millibars which was indicative of a weakening storm.\u00a0 In the past several hours satellite imagery suggests that a few new thunderstorms could be forming closer to the center of circulation.\u00a0 Erika is moving over water where the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) is between 28\u00b0C and 29\u00b0C.\u00a0 So there is plenty of energy in the upper ocean.\u00a0 The circulation could be pulling in some drier air from farther north of the storm.\u00a0 There is also some vertical wind shear which may also be inhibiting intensification.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The combination of positive environmental factors like SST and negative environmental factors like drier air and wind shear make the intensity forecast challenging.\u00a0 Guidance from numerical models is divergent.\u00a0 Some models predict intensification while others predict that Erika will dissipate like Danny did.\u00a0 If more thunderstorms continue to develop around the center of circulation, then intensification would be more likely.\u00a0 On the other hand, if the recently formed thunderstorms dissipate in a few hours, the Erika could weaken to a tropical depression.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge is steering Erika a little north of due west and that general motion is expected to continue during the next several days.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Erika would approach the northern Leeward Islands in about 24 hours and it could be near Puerto Rico in less than two days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The imminent approach of Tropical Storm Erika prompted the issuance of watches and warnings for locations in the northeastern Caribbean Sea.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Tuesday the center of Tropical Storm Erika was located at latitude 16.0\u00b0N and longitude 54.4\u00b0W which put it about 495 miles (800 km) east of Antigua and about 1780 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[28,138,51,142,22,139,143],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1437,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions\/1437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}