National Hurricane Center Deputy Director Jamie Rhome gave an update on Hurricane Erin as it made landfall on Sunday and weakened to a Category 3 storm.
00:00Indicative of a powerful major hurricane, Aaron, the wind speeds have come down a little bit since yesterday, now at 125 miles per hour, making it a Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
00:14Pressure is up a little bit, 946 millibars, and now moving west-northwest at 13 miles per hour.
00:20I should note that the fluctuation and intensity for these types of storms are very common, and in fact, it's forecast to gain some strength over the next couple of days and return to Category 4 status.
00:32But the status, this is a great case of where the Saffir-Simpson scale can be a little bit misleading, because I want you to see this large area of heavy rain that is sort of parked over San Juan and the Virgin Islands, or Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
00:47If we sort of zoom in a little bit here, you can see this sort of area of heavy rain occurring over the same spots.
00:54These places have already received significant rainfall over the last 24 hours, and you could get another 2 to 4 inches of rain before the system, Aaron, finally pulls away, and a flood watch is in effect through tomorrow, and there's already places with flash flood warnings in effect.
01:12So, if you're watching us from down here, British Virgin Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, San Juan, Puerto Rico, not a good day to be out.
01:21Probably want to stay in.
01:22Now, what's going to happen as the storm starts to pull away?
01:25So, let's sort of zoom out a little bit.
01:28You can see we now have Tropical Storm Warnings, in effect, for the Turks and Caicos, and Tropical Storm Watch, in effect, for the Southeast Bahamas.
01:40Another great example of why the cone doesn't tell you this.
01:44If you sort of look at this big satellite image and project it along, you can see where we're going to clip the areas of the Southeast Bahamas and Turks and Caicos with these strong, gusty squalls, heavy rains, and winds.
01:57But many of you are probably tuning in to see what's going to happen down the road.
02:03Still anticipating a turn to the north and ultimately northeast by middle and late week, staying offshore of the eastern United States, but getting perilously close to the outer banks of North Carolina.
02:18So, let's look at the forecast wind field.
02:22This is the extent of Tropical Storm Forest Winds.
02:26And you can see, if the storm were to move just a little bit to the left or west of the forecast track, we could clip the outer banks with those Tropical Storm Forest Winds.
02:38And a Tropical Storm Watch may be required for the outer banks tomorrow, as early as tomorrow.
02:46But regardless of the track, regardless of whether it moves a little to the left or to the right, we still are seeing a major, major rip current risk unfolding.
02:58So, I'm going to start with the rip current risk today, currently.
03:02You can see it's a little bit of a rip current risk starting to unfold.
03:06But look what happens when I change it to tomorrow.
03:09You can really see the rip current reds here, rip current high risk starting to fill in along the coast.
03:15And that's only going to get worse as the week progresses.
03:20Why, you ask?
03:21Because this system is going to produce a massive wave, ocean wave field.
03:28The colors here show you the extent of the wave field.
03:31You can see it basically encompasses the entire western Atlantic and eastern seaboard.
03:37As these waves come and strike the coast, all that energy is going to break with these big breakers at the coastline.
03:43And that's going to increase the rip current risk significantly through the week.
03:50So, things start to go downhill tomorrow and get progressively worse through the week.
03:56So, if you're going to the beach this week, swim near a lifeguard, check local beach conditions, and just be mindful and safe if you're going to go to the beach.
04:04Now, we'll be back tomorrow at the same time with an update.
04:08But please remember, we update our forecast every six hours or four times a day.
04:13And you can always get the latest information at hurricanes.gov.
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