Tropical Storm Erika moved steadily toward the Leeward Islands on Wednesday.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Wednesday the center of Tropical Storm Erika was located at latitude 16.7\u00b0N and longitude 60.2\u00b0W which put it about 110 miles (175 km) east-southeast of Antigua and about 1400 miles east-southeast of Miami, Florida.\u00a0 Erika was moving toward the west at 16 m.p.h. (26 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 45 m.p.h. (70 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 60 m.p.h. (95 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, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands, Montserrat, Antigua, Barbuda, St. Kitts, Nevis, St. Martin and St. Barthelemy.\u00a0 Tropical Storm Watches have been issued for the coast of the Dominican Republic from Cabo Engano to Cabo Frances Viejo, the southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos, and Guadeloupe.<\/p>\n
Although Erika looks very impressive on infrared satellite images with a large area of cold cloud tops, it is in reality very poorly organized.\u00a0 The thunderstorms generating those cold clouds are located southeast of the low level center of circulation.\u00a0 There are not really any thunderstorms in other parts of Erika.\u00a0 There could be a mid-level center of circulation within the cluster of thunderstorms southeast of the surface center.\u00a0 Well organized tropical cyclones are vertically stacked with the mid-level center directly above the surface center.\u00a0 This is certainly not the case with Erika.\u00a0 Upper level winds from the west appear to be causing vertical wind shear over Erika and that is contributing to the poor organization.<\/p>\n
Erika is moving over water where the Sea Surface temperature is almost 29\u00b0C.\u00a0 So, there is sufficient energy in the upper ocean to support intensification.\u00a0 However, an upper level trough over the central Caribbean Sea could continue to cause wind shear over Erika.\u00a0 The intensity guidance is inconsistent.\u00a0 Some guidance strengthens Erika to a hurricane during the next few days, while other guidance weakens it.\u00a0 Until the circulation become more well organized and thunderstorms develop near the center of circulation, significant intensification is unlikely.\u00a0 If the vertical wind shear gets any stronger it could weaken Erika to a tropical depression.<\/p>\n
The track forecast is also challenging.\u00a0 The numerical guidance shifted the track toward the east on Wednesday evening, but that was due to the fact that the models were predicting that Erika would become a stronger hurricane.\u00a0 If it become a stronger storm with a taller, vertically coherent circulation, then the upper trough over the Caribbean could push Erika farther east.\u00a0 However, if Erika remains weaker, then the winds in the lower levels of the atmosphere could push it farther to the west.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Erika could approach southeastern Florida in about four days.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Storm Erika moved steadily toward the Leeward Islands on Wednesday.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Wednesday the center of Tropical Storm Erika was located at latitude 16.7\u00b0N and longitude 60.2\u00b0W which put it about 110 miles (175 km) east-southeast of Antigua and about 1400 miles east-southeast of Miami, Florida.\u00a0 Erika was moving toward the […]<\/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":[51,140,22,29,97],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449"}],"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=1449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1450,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449\/revisions\/1450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}