JACKSONVILLE, FLA – Tropical Storm Erin formed just west of the Cabo Verde Islands in the far eastern Atlantic on Monday.
The National Hurricane Center says this system skipped the tropical depression phase and named it a tropical storm based on the satellite organization.
The computer guidance is in near unanimous agreement that it will cross the Atlantic and pass between Bermuda and Puerto Rico by Friday.
Monday, Aug. 11, is actually the average date for the first hurricane of the season in the Atlantic. We’re not there yet, but long-range patterns suggest we could see one by the end of this week.
We could be talking about Hurricane Erin as soon as Wednesday. The NHC is calling for Erin to become the first major Category 3 hurricane of the season by the time it passes northeast of the Leeward Islands this weekend. Conditions will be favorable for strengthening as it heads toward the northeast Caribbean and outpaces drier air to the north.
What’s steering Erin
In the short term, there’s no mystery: strong high pressure to the north will keep the system on a steady westward track. But things get less certain by the weekend. A cold front will drop off the Northeast U.S. coast, forcing that high-pressure ridge eastward and likely opening up a path north. How much of that path the system takes depends on its strength — stronger storms feel those northern dips in the jet stream sooner, while weaker storms stay locked in the trade winds and push farther west.
Possible track scenarios
Right now, the consensus track curves the storm north of the Caribbean and well offshore of the U.S. East Coast, potentially bringing it close to Bermuda. But I want to stress — long-range model consensus is not a guarantee. We’ve already seen these forecasts bounce around over the past couple of days. The current range of possible tracks is still very wide, from the Southeast U.S. to Atlantic Canada.
As the system organizes and we get better satellite and aircraft data into the models, the forecast cone will tighten. Until then, no one in the western Atlantic should be letting their guard down, but it is unlikely to impact the U.S based on current model trends.
Impacts: At a minimum, significant swells are likely along much of the U.S. East Coast next week as Erin tracks parallel to the shoreline.
The good news: this system is still far away — about 2,500 miles from Puerto Rico and 3,500 miles from Florida. We’ve got several days before any direct impacts are possible, but it’s a storm worth watching closely as it crosses the Atlantic.