I'm WS9, Weather Watch
meteorologist Topper shut.
We are tracking Fiona forecast to
become a Category 4 now, category 3B S,
our first major hurricane of the season.
And one thing we look at are water
temperature, sea surface temperatures,
OK, how warm is the water?
That's what it needs.
That's its energy. It's food.
It's pretty toasty.
Water temperature 85,
just north of Dominican Republic,
and even on its way to Bermuda,
water temperature even hotter, 86.
So it has plenty of fuel, so to speak.
Right now, we don't see any kind
of upper air wind shearing it off,
so there's no reason why this
thing can't really intensify.
And Nash Hurricanes Center says it will.
It could have winds up to
140 by Thursday night.
Alright, that's one thing to look at.
Wave height and you can see this is
where the concentrated big waves are.
And we'll kind of zoom in and talk
about 1:30 foot waves now just to the
north of the Caicos Turks and Caicos.
So it's producing some pretty big waves,
and as it moves further
north and intensifies,
these waves could get bigger,
probably 35 feet.
Possibly.
The good news is there again,
in the middle of the ocean.
Bad news though,
it's headed toward Bermuda
late Thursday night,
early, early Friday.
So clearly defined eye now
as it pulls northward.
So we're you know,
we're seeing just a couple of leftover
bands down toward the Dominican Republic.
But for the most part,
the storm is now pulled away from Puerto
Rico and also from the the Dominican
Republic and pulling away from parts
of the Caicos and Turks and Caicos.
Now this is the spaghetti plot again.
Each line is a computer model
and they're in pretty good at.
Agreement.
They're pretty close together.
Most of them take the storm West of Bermuda.
Couple of outliers.
That track will be devastating for Bermuda.
If we see a track that's very
close but still West of Bermuda,
that would put the highest winds
right over the islands of Bermuda.
But most of the tracks are further West.
So I I think that we're we're
Bermuda is in better shape.
The farther W it is,
the better off it's going to be.
But that said,
it's going to be a pretty massive storm.
I mean it could be a category three
and then become a category four
as we get into Thursday morning.
And then by the time we get
to new midnight on Friday,
so late Thursday night,
it's going to be West of Bermuda as a cat,
four winds could be
13140 mph and then as it moves
north and then turns back.
Northeast and turns back to the
north over toward Newfoundland.
This is kind of crazy still a cat too.
That's at 10:00 o'clock Saturday night.
That would be kind of devastating
to Newfoundland and Saint
Johns cause you would get,
they would get the highest winds
and actually have a pretty good
storm surge considering that's kind
of unusual for Newfoundland. OK.
So we always talk about the Saffir
Simpson scale, you know the category.
So we've not had a category 3 yet,
category 3111 to 129 mph and that means?
Stained CAT4 is 130 to 156 and then
a category five is 157 and higher.
So again,
that's Hurricane Center thinks it
could become a cat four Thursday late
Thursday night into early Friday morning,
we will see. OK.
Hurricane names were all the way to Fiona.
And again, Danielle was a Cat 1,
Earl was a cat too,
feeling a cat three and could become a cat 4.
So that's our first major
hurricane of the season.
And in terms of their forecast, I mean.
Forecast 14 to 20 named storms.
Of those,
six to 10 were to become hurricanes
and of those three to five
would be would become major.
We're kind of running out of time for that.
We'll see.
We're in a busy part.
But you know, once we get in September,
not as many storms develop
in the month of October.
It's still possible you can get
storms in November for that matter.
OK, let's talk about storms by month,
not much in June and July,
10% combined and then 29% in August.
Again, September is the big, big month, 36%.
October, we have some,
I mean, you know,
more than June and July combined,
19% of all hurricanes.
Develop during the month of October.
So just a side note here.
Looks like Fiona is going to stay on track.
There's another disturbance behind
Fiona that's gonna duck down
to the South and go more over
Cuba into the Gulf of Mexico.
And we're going to be watching that
for next week and that could affect
the US along the Gulf Coast and maybe
even affect us the weekend from next.