Tropical storm update: Hurricane Lee downgraded to Category 3 storm as US impacts still ‘too soon to know’: Live

Hurricane Lee, still a Category 3 storm, is expected to pass “pass well to the north of the northern Leeward Islands, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico into early next week,” according to an afternoon advisory from the National Hurricane Center.

Maximum sustained winds are near 115 mph with higher gusts, and gradual “restrengthening” is possible during the next couple of days, the center predicts.

Swells generated by Lee are affecting portions of the Lesser Antilles and will spread westward to the British and US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Bahamas, and Bermuda through the weekend. Those swells are “likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions,” according to the report.

“Dangerous surf and rip currents” are also expected along the US East Coast on Sunday and Monday and then worsen through the week.

Hurricane Lee was significantly disrupted by wind shear within the 24 hours after it accelerated into a Category 5 hurricane, as it then degraded into a Category 4 then Category 3 into Saturday morning.

Models are suggesting that the shear will subside by Sunday morning, which could allow Lee to gain more strength as it continues to track east, according to Levi Cowan with Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

“Regardless of Lee’s exact intensity, it will be a major hurricane tracking north of the Caribbean and then turning northward over the western Atlantic over the next week,” he said.

“It remains too soon to rule out impacts from Lee” as models predict it could track forwards Bermuda, Canada and the northeastern US, he added.

Hurricane Lee’s acceleration from an 80 mph Cat 1 to a Cat 5 with 160 mph winds within 24 hours has surpassed the standards meteorologists typically associate with “rapid intensification,” or when winds increase by 35 mph within that same time period.

It not only makes Lee the fastest-intensifying Atlantic storm on record, it has set a new threshold that scientists see as a potential harbinger for what’s to come as the climate crisis accelerates.

“This one increased by 80 mph,” Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgia’s Atmospheric Sciences Program and a past president of the American Meteorological Society told the Associated Press. “I can’t emphasize this enough – we used to have this metric of 35 mph, and here’s a storm that did twice that amount and we’re seeing that happen more frequently.”

Newly formed Tropical Storm Margot is expected to grow into a hurricane next week, raising the possibility that Hurricane Lee’s path could be changed, though it is still far too soon to project whether the two major storms could get close to one another in the Atlantic.

Such a phenomenon, when two storms rotate around each other and spin in the same direction, is called the Fujiwhara effect. The National Weather Service describes it as “an intense dance around their common center.”

That could then push them both around the Atlantic and alter their paths.

The phenomenon occured with hurricanes Hilary and Irwin in the East Pacific in 2017.

Lee marked the first Category 5 hurricane of this year’s Atlantic season when it rapidly grew from a Category 1 within 24 hours this week. There have been seven other Cat 5 storms from the Atlantic since 2016, with one – Michael – making landfall in the US in 2018.

Within thouse 24 hours, Hurricane Lee intensified from an 80 mph Cat 1 to a Cat 5 with 160 mph winds, likely making it the fastest-intensifying Atlantic storm on record.

Lee has since diminished to a Cat 3 storm and is expected to maintain its strength over the weekend.

Hurricane Lee is “maintaing strength” as a recently downgraded Category 3 storm as it moves across the Atlanta Ocean with maximum sustained winds of 115 mph with higher gusts, according to the latest advisory from the National Hurricane Center.

“Little change in strength is expected today, but gradual restrengthening is forecast to occur on Sunday and Monday,” according to the advisory.

For the first time on record, Category 5 storms have formed in every tropical ocean basin within one year.

Lee, which has since downgraded to a Category 3 as it tracks along open Atlantic Ocean, accelerated from Category 1 strength into a Category 5 this week.

“I think it’s reasonable to hypothesize that the abnormally warm ocean temperatures around the world made this more likely to happen,” University of Miami, hurricane expert Brian McNoldy told The Washington Post. “Gives everything a boost.”

Hurricane Lee ramped up to a Category 5 storm within 24 hours this week, but it has been downgraded to a Category 3 and will likely lose strength over the course of the day as it struggles with wind shear.

The National Hurricane Center continues to stress it is still “way too soon” to know what impacts, if any, the storm could have along the East Coast of the US, and the storm could gain strength as it continues to move with sustained winds at 115 mph as of Saturday morning.

Dangerous and life-threatening rip currents are affecting parts of the Leeward Islands, according to NHC. Those conditions are expected to impact parts of Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Bahamas and Bermuda over the weekend.

Some forecast models suggest that Hurricane Lee could graze the US East Coast – but the jury is still out.

“Regardless, dangerous surf and rip currents are expected along most of the US East Coast beginning Sunday,” the National Hurricane Center warned.