Tropical Storm Erika is moving across Hispaniola and it is bringing heavy rain to parts of that island.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT the center of Tropical Storm Erika was located at latitude 17.9\u00b0N and longitude 71.2\u00b0W which put it about 95 miles (155 km) west-southwest of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and about 745 miles (1200 km) southeast of Miami, Florida.\u00a0 Erika was moving toward the west at 21 m.p.h. (33 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 50 m.p.h. (80 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 65 m.p.h. (105 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 1009 mb.\u00a0 Tropical Storm Warnings have been issued for the southeastern Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos, for the Dominican Republic, Haiti, for the Central Bahamas including Cat Island, the Exumas, Long Island, Rum Cay and San Salvador.\u00a0 Tropical Storm Watches have been issued for the northwestern Bahamas including the Abacos, Andros Island, Berry Island, Bimini, Eleuthera, Grand Bahama Island and New Providence, the Cuban provinces of Ciego de Avila, Camaguey, Las Tunas, Holguin and Guantanamo.<\/p>\n
The circulation around Tropical Storm Erika is even less well organized today.\u00a0 At times a small cyclonic rotation appeared on visible satellite images, while at other times Erika looked a lot like a very strong tropical wave.\u00a0 Vertical wind shear caused by an upper level trough over the western Caribbean Sea has prevented thunderstorms from forming near the core of the circulation.\u00a0 The lower part of the circulation will be significantly disrupted by the mountains of Hispaniola, but the middle portion may make it across the island.\u00a0 If the middle level circulation is disrupted as well, then Erika will degenerate into a disorganized area of thunderstorms.\u00a0 If the middle level circulation is still intact when it emerges west of Hispaniola, then it is possible that momentum could be transferred to the surface and a new low level center spun up.\u00a0 Erika would most likely be a tropical depression at most at that time.\u00a0 The water north of Cuba is very warm and if Erika still exists, it could intensify somewhat as it moves toward Florida.<\/p>\n
The winds in the lower levels continued to push Erika toward the west-northwest on Friday and that general motion is likely continue for the next 12 to 12 hours.\u00a0 Erika is getting closer to the western end of the subtropical high and it could turn more toward the north during the weekend.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Erika or its remnants could be approaching the Florida Keys on Sunday afternoon.\u00a0 At this time it is almost impossible to know how strong it will be at that time.\u00a0 If Erika does start to reorganize when it gets west of Hispaniola, watches and\/or warnings could be issued for parts of Florida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Storm Erika is moving across Hispaniola and it is bringing heavy rain to parts of that island.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT the center of Tropical Storm Erika was located at latitude 17.9\u00b0N and longitude 71.2\u00b0W which put it about 95 miles (155 km) west-southwest of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and about 745 miles (1200 […]<\/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":[145,144,51,26,25,29,97],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473"}],"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=1473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1474,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473\/revisions\/1474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}