Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
DORIAN ON ITS WAY
Hurricane expected to intensify over warm Atlantic waters before Florida landfall
All of Florida now is in Hurricane Dorian’s forecast zone as it travels away from Puerto Rico. Landfall on Labor Day as a Category 3 is increasingly likely, according to the National Hurricane Center’s 8 p.m. Wednesday weather update.
And somewhat ominously for South Florida, the predicted storm track continues to edge south.
“Dorian is forecast to strengthen into a powerful hurricane during the next few days over the Atlantic waters,” the center said.
The window of impact is a swath more than 400 miles wide extending from southern MiamiDade County to southern Georgia.
“Dorian’s small size makes it susceptible to rapid intensification. This could occur when it moves past Puerto Rico and frees itself from dry air. These quick bursts of rapid intensification are difficult to forecast,” according to weather.com.
As Dorian leaves the Caribbean Sea and travels into the deeper, warmer waters of the Atlantic Ocean, it is expected to absorb energy and intensify.
“Plan for a Category 3 but it’s always healthy to plan for one up just in case,” Ken Graham, director of the Miami-based National Hurricane Center, said Wednesday.
This far out, the uncertainty surrounding the forecast — both the track and its intensity — is typical.
“The track forecast errors at Day 4 and Day 5 are large,” said Dennis Feltgen, spokesperson
for the National Hurricane Center. “The center of the storm can be anywhere in that cone twothirds of the time. And the cone has nothing to do with where the impacts of wind and water will take place.”
Dorian became a hurricane near St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands Wednesday afternoon and wind speeds jumped from 75 to 80 mph.
Puerto Rico avoided the brunt of the Category 1 hurricane, got less rain and felt fewer impacts than first expected as Dorian brushed by the island where blue tarps still cover some 30,000 homes nearly two years after Hurricane Maria.
An 80-year-old man died from a head injury after falling off a ladder while preparing his home for the hurricane, authorities in Bayamon, Puerto Rico said Wednesday.
The Puerto Rican islands of Vieques and Culebra, both tourist destinations, got a soaking but experienced no major issues.
“We’re happy because there are no damages to report,” Culebra Mayor William Solís told The Associated Press, noting that only one community lost power.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 26 Florida counties including all of South Florida on Wednesday evening.
The National Hurricane Center showed Dorian’s projected path coming ashore south of Cape Canaveral, a southward drop from earlier forecasts Wednesday.
Some of the global weather prediction systems used by weather agencies around the world pointed Dorian closer to Palm Beach County. Others had the storm hitting farther north near Daytona Beach and St. Augustine. Some extended into southern Georgia and some even showed Dorian zipping across the state and emerging into the Gulf of Mexico and possibly making landfall further up the gulf coast.
Florida residents who were here for Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Irma in 2017 will remember that pretty much right up until the last day or so, nobody really knew if South Florida would be spared or not.
And Irma, which made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 132 mph in Cudjoe Key in the lower Keys, still exacted a significant amount of damage in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.
According to the hurricane center, tropical storm-force winds could start hitting parts of Florida early Saturday.
If Dorian is a Category 3 when it hits Florida, that means it’ll have top winds of between 111 and 129 mph. (As of Wednesday forecasts were projecting that Dorian’s peak winds would reach 115 mph.) Winds that powerful are strong enough to carve a huge path of destruction while tearing off roofs, toppling trees and causing electricity and water outages that could last for days if not weeks.
Because the path had Dorian exiting the Caribbean Sea and emerging over the open Atlantic, the storm will be guzzling the fuel that pumps storms up into monsters — warm ocean waters. In addition, there wasn’t a a lot of storm-killing wind shear in its path, forecasters were saying.
At 8 p.m. Dorian was just 60 miles from San Juan, Puerto Rico with maximum winds of 80 mph — a 30 mph increase from Tuesday and a 20 mph increase from Wednesday morning — as it moved northwest at 13 mph.
No matter what happens, Dorian is expected to drench parts of Florida’s east coast with 4 to 8 inches of rain and, in isolated areas, up to 10 inches, according to the hurricane center.
As well, according to the National Weather Service, the probability of tropical storm-force winds hitting Palm Beach County was 76%, while the probability for Broward County was 65% and 48% for Miami.
As for the likelihood of hurricane-strength winds hitting those counties, the probability was 26% for Palm Beach, 17% for Broward and 10% for Miami.
But if the track continues to shift south, those probabilities would increase.
Be prepared, officials urged, as Florida residents started flocking to stores and gas stations for supplies and fuel on Wednesday. Meanwhile, cruise lines were also making adjustments to their Caribbean routes.
“Residents of Florida need to pay attention to this hurricane and make sure their hurricane plan is ready to go,” Feltgen said.
Tropical Depression Erin
Meanwhile, Tropical Depression Erin, formerly a tropical storm overnight, was churning in the Atlantic about 265 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras, N.C., with winds measuring 40 mph. It was posing no immediate threat to the United States.
Hurricane season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, but 95 percent of storms are produced during the peak period from mid-August to late October, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has warned that conditions could be favorable for more dangerous storms than initially projected.