Although it is not very well organized, Tropical Storm Erika brought heavy rains to parts of the northeastern Caribbean Sea on Thursday and it caused flooding on Dominica.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Tropical Storm Erika was located at latitude 16.6\u00b0N and longitude 65.3\u00b0W which put it about 135 miles (215 km) south-southeast of San Juan, Puerto Rico and about 1145 miles (1850 km) east-southeast of Miami, Florida.\u00a0 Erika was moving toward the west at 17 m.p.h. (28 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 1008 mb.\u00a0 Tropical Storm Warnings have been issued for Puerto Rico, Vieques, Culebra, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands, the southeastern Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos, the coast of the Dominican Republic from Isla Saona to the border with Haiti, St. Barthelemy and St. Martin.\u00a0 Tropical Storm Watches have been issued for the Central Bahamas and the coast of the Dominican Republic from Isla Saona to Punta Palenque.<\/p>\n
The circulation around Tropical Storm Erika is poorly organized to due persistent upper level winds from the west which are causing vertical wind shear.\u00a0 The low level circulation consists of a large diffuse center with at least once smaller mesoscale center rotating around inside the larger diffuse center.\u00a0 The mesoscale center could have been produced by one of the thunderstorm clusters that form nightly in the southeastern portion of the circulation.\u00a0 Again on Thursday the strongest thunderstorms occurred east of the center of circulation.\u00a0 Those thunderstorms produced a lot of upper level divergence but the upper level westerly winds pushed that divergence east of the low level center.\u00a0 As a result, the surface pressure actually rose a couple of millibars on Thursday.\u00a0 Stronger thunderstorms are forming southeast of the center of Erika again tonight.\u00a0 So, the pattern of the past several nights appears to be repeating itself again.<\/p>\n
An upper level trough over the western Caribbean Sea is causing the westerly winds that are the source of vertical wind shear over Erika.\u00a0 That trough is expected to drift west and slowly weaken.\u00a0 If it does weaken in a couple of days, then the upper level wind pattern could be more favorable for intensification.\u00a0 However, the center of Erika could pass over or very near Hispaniola.\u00a0 It is likely that the mountains on that island would significantly disrupt the low level circulation.\u00a0 If the low level circulation maintains its integrity, the Sea Surface Temperatures around the Bahamas and south Florida are very warm.\u00a0 If Erika still has a coherent circulation at that time it could organize quickly.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge is steering Erika toward the west.\u00a0 Erika is nearing the western end of the ridge and a turn toward the west-northwest is possible.\u00a0 If Erika gets stronger and the circulation is taller, then the upper level trough could push it more toward the north.\u00a0 On the other hand, if the circulation of Erika stays weaker and shorter, then lower level flow could push it farther west.\u00a0 Erika is likely to pass near or over Hispaniola on Friday and on its anticipated track it could be approaching south Florida in about 72 hours.<\/p>\n
Even if Erika is a disorganized tropical storm it is capable of producing heavy rains and flooding on any island it crosses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Although it is not very well organized, Tropical Storm Erika brought heavy rains to parts of the northeastern Caribbean Sea on Thursday and it caused flooding on Dominica.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Tropical Storm Erika was located at latitude 16.6\u00b0N and longitude 65.3\u00b0W which put it about 135 miles (215 […]<\/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":[138,145,144,51,26,140,22,29,97],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462"}],"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=1462"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1463,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462\/revisions\/1463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}