Hurricane watchers eye hard-to-pin Jose

Landfall possible, but track still unknown

A hurricane-battered nation could soon shift its attention to Hurricane Jose, meandering around the western Atlantic Ocean 300 miles northeast of the Turks and Caicos Islands.

As of 5 p.m. ET Monday, Jose had winds of 100 mph, making it a Category 2 storm.

Fortunately, over the weekend, Jose only brushed the islands of the Caribbean that had been slammed by Irma, such as Barbuda, Antigua and the Virgin Islands.

Hurricanes in this part of the Atlantic often race out to sea and into oblivion, but that won’t be the case with Jose.

Calling it an “odd forecast track,” the National Hurricane Center said Jose should make a small clockwise loop over the open waters of the Atlantic for the next three days.

The center said this is because of an area of high pressure that will move around the hurricane over the next several days.

Long-range models suggest that the strengthening high-pressure area will then force the hurricane to move west-northwest toward the East Coast, according to the Weather Underground.

Models show a wide range of possibilities, all the way from South Carolina to Newfoundland, or even out to sea.

Of 20 runs of the Global Forecast System’s model ensemble forecast Monday morning, 25% resulted in an eventual landfall in the USA, and another 25% in Canada. The rest kept the storm out to sea.

For the European weather model, a recurvature out to sea or a landfall in New England or Canada were the outcomes.

As for intensity, the hurricane center predicted a high-end Category 1 hurricane with 90-mph winds by Saturday.

Any direct hit from Jose wouldn’t be until next week.

“Until Jose is farther along on its loop, the models are likely to have large errors, and we should not take too much comfort (or indulge in too much angst) over a particular set of model runs,” Weather Underground meteorologist Jeff Masters said.

The only immediate impact from the hurricane will be rough surf and the chance of rip currents in Hispaniola, the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands over the next couple of days.