Delta maintains strength, track shifts away from Fla. Panhandle
Hurricane Delta strengthened slightly Tuesday evening but remains a Category 4 storm, theNationalHurricane Center said in its 8 p.m. update. Delta has maximumsustained winds of 145mph, a 5 mph increase from the 2 p.m. update.
It’s the strongest storm ever named after a letter in the Greek alphabet, eclipsing Hurricane Beta in 2005, which reached 115 mph.
Delta remains on track to strike the northeastern Yucatan Peninsula and then the U.S. Gulf Coast later thisweek.
Delta, the earliest 25th-named storm ever to form, was located about 180 miles east-southeast from Cozumel, Mexico and traveling at17 mph, the hurricane center said in its 8 p.m. advisory.
Delta has undergone rapid intensification, which is defined as an increase of maximum sustained winds by at least 35mph in a 24-hour period. Delta was a tropical storm roughly 36 hours ago.
“Delta is the fastest storm to intensify fromtropical depression to a Category 4 storm in modern records,” said Michael Ventrice, meteorological scientist for The Weather Company.
Delta beat Hurricane Keith (2000) by six hours for most rapid intensification.
“Right now the storm is tracking over very deep warm water in the northwest Caribbean,” said Accuweather senior meteorologist Dan Kottlowski. “The northwest Caribbean has some of the deepest warm water anywhere in theworld.”
Kottlowski, Accuweather’s lead hurricane expert, said because of that path Delta could intensify further.
“Whenever we’ve seen that happen, storms likeDelta have intensified dramatically and that’s exactly what’s going on right now,” he said. “Delta is going to continue to intensify...There’s even a chance it could reach Category 5 hurricane status before it makes landfall over the northeastern portion of the Yucatan peninsula.”
This has been a busy hurricane season with nine named storms making landfall in the U.S., which ties the record number established in 1916. Beta became the first storm named after a letter of the Greek alphabet to make landfall in the continentalU.S. when it came ashore near Port O’Connor, Texas on Sept. 21.
The Gulf Coastwas hit twice in September. In addition, to Beta, Hurricane Sally made landfall on Sept. 16 near Gulf Shores, Ala.
In late August, the region was pummeled in a 72-hour period by Hurricane Laura and Tropical StormMarco. Laura came ashore in coastal Louisiana at Category 4 strength. Marco, which had briefly been a hurricane in the Gulf ofMexico, made landfall as a tropical storm near the mouth of the Mississippi River.
Hurricane Hanna made landfall in southern Texas in late July. And Tropical Storm Cristobal made a second landfall on the Louisiana coast on June 7.
“For some areas they’re still picking up the pieces after Laura, they’re still picking up the pieces after Sally,” said Dennis Feltgen, spokesman for the National Hurricane Center. “We’ve been through it in Florida where we have multiple storms in the same year so we know what that’s like here and it can be a very difficult situation.”
October storms often threaten Florida as they move north and then northeastward. None of the nine storms that hit the continental U.S. this year made landfall in Florida.
“Storms don’t move by themselves, they move by the pattern that is set up at the time,” Feltgen said. “We’ve been in this pattern where we get a number of these systems that have been moving through the Caribbean and then they’re gonna start gaining some latitude as they get into the western Caribbean and that puts them in the Gulf of Mexico. And once you’ve got a storm in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s very rare for them to get out of the Gulf without hitting something.”
Hurricanewarningswere in effect Tuesday in Mexico from Tulum to Dzilam, including Cozumel . Tropical storm warnings were in effect for parts of the Yucatan
and parts of Cuba.
“This could be the strongest hurricane strike on Cancún in 15 years, since Wilma stalled over the northeast Yucatan Peninsula after becoming the strongest Atlantic Basin tropical cyclone on record, by pressure,” according to TheWeather Channel.
Forecasters warned of potentially life-threatening flooding and mudslides in the hurricane’s path.
The storm-weary Gulf Coast is in the cone of concern for the sixth time in the 2020 hurricane season. Delta is projected to have winds in the 125mph range when it makes landfall in the U.S. sometime Friday.
Louisiana, Mississippi and a sliver of southeastTexas are in the forecast path. The track shifted away fromFlorida’s Panhandle on Tuesday night. Delta is bringing life-threatening storm surge, wind and rain. As of Tuesday, no watches or advisories were in effect for the U.S. That will likely change later thisweek.
Louisiana andAlabamahave already declared a state of emergency ahead of the storm.