Near death, Eta expected to return as ‘zombie storm’
Halloween is over, but the zombie threat still exists.
Zombie storm, that is. Tropical Depression Eta at 4 p.m. Thursday was nearly dead, nothing but swirling clouds and rain with almost no tropical characteristics remaining.
But the Caribbean Sea is about to breathe new life into Eta. When a storm dies and then regenerates, forecasters call it a zombie storm.
Just one more bit of weirdness the year 2020 has thrown at us.
Eta is forecast to become a tropical storm late in the weekend and affect South Florida by early next week.
“The low-level circulation of Eta has become disorganized to the point that the system more resembles a remnant low than a tropical cyclone,” National Hurricane Center forecasters said inan update on Eta at 4 p.m. Thursday.
Maximum sustained winds had dropped below 30 mph as the storm approached the coast of Honduras.
“It didn’t completely die,” said Jonathan Erdman, digital meteorologist for The Weather Channel. “But it is definitely on life support.”
Zombie storms are unusual, but Eta wouldn’t be the first of this record hurricane season. In September, Hurricane Paulette was declared dead after hitting Bermuda, but then sprung back to life far in the western Atlantic near the Azores.
“Because 2020, we now have Zombie Tropical Storms,” the National Weather Service said at the time. “Welcome back to the land of the living, Tropical Storm Paulette.”
Hurricane Ivan in September 2004 had perhaps the most zombielike characteristics of them all. After crashing through the Caribbean and making landfall in Gulf Shores, Ala., Ivan fell apart as it moved over the U.S. toward Virginia.
When Ivan got to the Atlantic, it came alive again and stumbled all the way downthe east coast to Florida, made a second landfall near the Broward and Miami-Dade county line, crossed the Gulf of Mexico again, and made a third and final landfall west of New Orleans.
Eta lived a wild life, making landfall in Nicaragua as a Category 4 storm Tuesday after briefly flirting with Category 5 strength. The mountains of Central
America became the storm’s undoing, ripping it apart even though the heaviest rain and winds remained largely offshore.
“It’s not flat-lined yet,” Erdman said. “It barely has a pulse. It’s still there. But it should pull back to life this weekend.”
Whether or not Eta completely dissipates as a tropical system, it’s death would be short-lived. It is expected to reemerge in the Caribbean overnight, where it might be classified as a hybrid system. A hybrid has both tropical and non-tropical characteristics.
What’s more certain is that Eta could bring a scary amount of rain — 8 to 10 inches — to an already-saturated South Florida area. Downpours and a prolonged stretch of steady rain is forecast.
“We can’t discount the possibility it could maybe maintain some kind of relatively small inner core, which itwould still bemore tropical in nature,” said Robert Molleda, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service’s Miami office.
“We still have to see how it evolves. The storm still hasn’t even re-formed yet, if you will, over the Caribbean. It’s still a big mess down there over Central America.”
Molleda saidEta reminds him a bit of 1994 s Hurricane Gordon, another November storm that originated in the western Caribbean and took a winding path to Florida before eventually drenching South Florida.