Rapidly intensifying Helene will make landfall in Florida tomorrow

AccuWeather

Helene is expected to strengthen into a hurricane before making landfall in Florida on Sept. 26. AccuWeather's Jon Porter says the storm will continue to intensify rapidly into a Category 3 storm.

Transcript

00:00A picture is worth a thousand words here. Let's take a look at Helene this morning and just

00:06remember what it looked like yesterday. It is a just a very impressive looking tropical storm on

00:13its way to a hurricane. Yeah Bernie what a day, what a difference a day makes. It's an intensifying

00:19tropical storm, maximum sustained winds of 70 miles per hour on the doorstep of becoming a

00:24hurricane and it's just starting its journey here in terms of intensification and see how

00:30close it is to the Yucatan Peninsula. When a storm gets that close that can actually,

00:34that interaction with land can also help tighten up the circulation and that may be in fact what

00:39ends up getting it started on this rapid intensification. I want to show you the radar

00:43from the Cuban Meteorological Service and we can see the center of circulation now within the

00:49Yucatan channel here. Again if we can go to that radar you can clearly see that we have the bands

00:55of showers and thunderstorms again wrapping in around the storm center. Can we go to that radar,

01:01is that available to us? The radar from the Cuban, there it is. Okay John what I see is certainly a

01:08very well, looks like maintained center of circulation and look at the banding along the

01:13eastern side of the eye. Yes those are, these are all signs that's a great radar presentation from

01:19the Meteorological Service of Cuba there and you can see those bands of rain organizing,

01:26again a sign of an intensifying storm. All right water vapor loop, remember it was 48 hours ago

01:32John, you and I were looking at the Gulf of Mexico and saying well tell you what, if this doesn't

01:39rapidly intensify it's because of all of the dry air but we had the concern that that dry

01:44air in the Gulf of Mexico would be leaving and it certainly has as we see an increase of moisture

01:51on the northern side of Jalene. That's exactly right, the storm continues to drive that

01:56increased moisture to the north and so this this graphic has been the first one that I've

02:02looked at when I've been analyzing the storm every day this week and the increase in moisture

02:07indicated in those whites and green colors driving well north of the storm. It's been

02:14very a marked increase and again that shows us that we don't think dry air is going to be concerned

02:19at all. Now the wind shear is limited John, I would not say that it is the pristine or a perfect setup

02:28for rapid development, it is lessening but here is what our concern is and it's been our concern

02:34this entire hurricane season that while maybe the moisture and maybe the wind shear aren't the

02:42perfect setup, the water temperatures certainly are the perfect setup for rapid intensification.

02:48You could see the water temperatures in the middle 80s John but it's more than that, it's how deep

02:55that warm water is in the northwest Caribbean in the Gulf of Mexico, it's called the ocean heat

03:00content. Yes and we look at that ocean heat content in fact in those in that graphic you can

03:06see Helene is going to be passing right over a current loop and what that is in the Gulf of

03:10Mexico is that's an area of that high ocean heat content indicated in the yellows oranges and reds

03:17that's some of the deepest and warmest water in the Gulf of Mexico. It's going to be like rocket

03:23fuel that's why this storm is going to intensify to a category three hurricane and may do so even

03:29beyond that as you mentioned earlier Bernie. John I'm going to share a conversation that you and I

03:34had off camera because just to let the viewers know we have a very bad feeling about this.

03:41I've seen this before in Ian, I've seen it in Michael that yes the wind shear is not perfect

03:48for development but the fact that it's parallel or at the back of Helene makes us consider

03:57changing this to at least a category four at some point tomorrow and tomorrow night before

04:02landfall. It can certainly get there if it's able to fully take advantage of this environment that

04:08we're talking about. It's going to have to develop an inner core and if it does that this storm can

04:12become even more intense. We want to show you an AccuWeather exclusive here. This is our landfall

04:19forecast and we're showing you as we continue to zone in on where we think landfall is going to be

04:25this decision was made this morning as far west as Mexico Beach and as far east as Horseshoe Beach

04:32and Steenhatchee which got certainly inundated from Debbie just about a month ago so that is

04:39our landfall forecast. Note the maximum staying was at landfall 120 to 125 miles per hour.

04:47A big storm for sure and also very important to point out this is going to be a large storm too

04:53so the dangerous life-threatening impacts from storm surge from flooding rainfall and from the

04:59damaging winds are going to spread out hundreds of miles from this storm so it's not only just

05:03where it makes landfall but they're going to be very dangerous life-threatening impacts well inland.

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