Frightening sign of future
Rapid strengthening of Hurricane Lee is alarming experts
Hurricane Lee, the massive storm that strengthened from a Category 1 into a rare Category 5 hurricane in about 24 hours toward the end of last week, is catching the attention of experts who see its rapid escalation as a frightening sign of things to come.
Lee — which on Saturday was a Category 3 storm with winds at nearly 115 mph — is expected to remain a powerful hurricane through the week, with “dangerous surf and rip currents expected along most of the U.S. East Coast beginning Sunday and Monday,” the National Hurricane Center said in its Saturday morning update.
The hurricane had been classified as a Category 1 storm Thursday, but more than doubled its wind speeds to 165 mph just one day later — due in part to warmer ocean temperatures.
Unlike similar storms in the past, however, Lee’s rapid intensification — the third-quickest ever recorded in the North Atlantic Ocean — was correctly predicted by the National Hurricane Center, said Dr. Jase Bernhardt, a meteorologist and assistant professor of geology at Hofstra University on Long Island.
“They said there was a very, very high likelihood of there being a rapid intensification, which would be historic, one of the quickest of all time, and then indeed that happened,” Bernhardt told the Daily News.
However, the storm weakened “much more quickly than we expected,” Bernhardt added. While the initial projection was a “huge win” for forecasters, the unexpected behavior of the storm “showed us that we still have a long way to go to be perfect.”
Some experts also see Lee’s swift strengthening as an indicator of an increase in similar massive storms in the future as ocean temperatures continue to rise.
“Hurricanes are getting stronger at higher latitudes,” said Marshall Shepherd, a former president of the American Meteorological Society. “If that trend continues, that brings into play places like Washington, D.C., New York and Boston.”
According to Shepherd, who serves as the director of the University of Georgia’s Atmospheric Sciences Program, the ocean’s extra heat “comes back to manifest itself at some point, and one of the ways it does is through stronger hurricanes.”
As Lee continues to move north-northwest, meteorologists say it’s still “way too soon” to predict what level of impact — if any — Lee might have along the U.S. East Coast, Atlantic Canada or Bermuda this week.
“There’s still a lot of uncertainty with the forecast,” Bernhardt said, but it’s “very, very unlikely” New York will be directly impacted by it.
“Right now, by far the most likely scenario is [Lee] starts to turn more to the north and eventually parallels the U.S. East Coast and turns [even more] to the east and away from us before it gets too close,” he added.
“We want to keep a very, very close eye on it. But you don’t want to be panicking, at least here in New York.”