00:00All right, joining us right now is AccuWeather lead, hurricane expert, Alex DaSilva.
00:05And, you know, Alex, when hurricanes get this close to the United States,
00:11the National Hurricane Center continues to fly planes into Aaron.
00:15Getting the latest information, there is a plane in Aaron right now.
00:20Yeah, we're continuously looking at some of this data coming in from the great Air Force pilots
00:25that are flying around in the plane, in the hurricane there.
00:28And they're giving us great data suggesting that the wind field continues to expand this morning.
00:34The storm has at least undergone two eyewall replacement cycles, which really helps to expand the wind field.
00:39That's a completely normal process in these really powerful hurricanes.
00:43But what it does, one of the byproducts is, it really expands that wind field.
00:47Look at how massive the storm's reach is.
00:49These clouds extend from North Carolina all the way off the coast of the Bahamas here.
00:54So really, really expansive wind field.
00:56And this is why we're so concerned about the rip currents and the powerful surf all the way up the east coast.
01:02And it also looks as though, Alex, as we zoom on in, that Aaron is still jogging a little west.
01:09So we do believe this will likely get inside 74 degrees west.
01:13We'll get to that in a second.
01:15But you were talking about the expanding wind field.
01:17You could really see it over the last 24 hours.
01:20Yeah, if we run this satellite image through, you can really see the storm expanding.
01:25And then in that last frame, you can just see kind of a classic hurricane look to it there with those outer rain bands expanding out from the center of circulation.
01:33It dealt with some dry air yesterday, but it was really able to overcome that during the overnight hours.
01:37And I think a lot of that actually has to do with the warm sea surface temperatures that it's moving over right now.
01:42Middle 80s right now, we typically look for about 80 degrees or so to sustain that tropical development.
01:48We're well above that.
01:50And you can really see if we put this into motion here, the lungs of the storm.
01:53Look on the northern side of the storm.
01:55The storm is pushing away that dry air, pushing that yellow out of its way right now.
01:59That's the storm essentially breathing.
02:02It had a little bit of trouble this time yesterday.
02:04But now that it's gotten into those warm waters, wind shear has come down a little bit.
02:08It has really started to balloon out and really expand.
02:11And you can see that wind shear there, the light purple indicating lower wind shear values.
02:17Look where the center is located, right in the middle of that lighter pink color there.
02:21Lower wind shear is allowing the storm to breathe.
02:24All right.
02:25This has always been the second fork in the road.
02:27The first fork in the road was Monday, Tuesday.
02:29How far west would it go?
02:30We were all concerned it would easily get west of 70 degrees west.
02:35That 75 degree west is the line just east of the outer banks of North Carolina.
02:42We don't think it's going to get that far west because of this dip in the jet stream coming into the east today and tonight.
02:50Yeah, but these little wobbles still concern me a little bit because even a difference of 25 miles can make a big difference for the Carolina coastline.
02:57So this thing just jogged a little bit west here over the last couple of hours.
03:01Again, we don't expect a landfall or anything like that, but maybe it could get within 200 miles of the coast.
03:06Right now, the center of our cone takes it about 200 to 215 miles or so off the coast, and that's the center of the cone.
03:14But if it jogs a little bit more to the west, those impacts are going to be even greater.
03:18Luckily, that trough is coming into the northeast.
03:20That's going to be the kicker.
03:21So this will turn to the north and east.
03:23But the question is, how much westward gain is it going to get over the next 12 hours?
03:27And that's why we continue to have that western window a little farther to the west than the actual storm center.
03:34That's the possibility.
03:36AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva.
03:39Alex, thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather Early.
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