The National Hurricane Center has played Erika very cautiously and with good understanding.  There are a lot of inconsistencies between various forecast model guidance.  The latest official forecast track issued by NHC shows that narrow black line moving in a west-northwest direction, but Erika has decided once again to play by her own rules.

Look at just how much the official track has changed within the last update from the previous update.

Notice the white “Error Cone” – that’s pretty important.  Most people just focus on a single point and that little black line, but that white cone exist for a reason and anyone within that cone should pay extremely close attention to Erika. In fact, anyone within 200 miles of either side of that cone should pay attention to any storm’s track.

Latest satellite imagery shows Erika clearly moving in a south-southwest direction and heading straight for the Leeward Islands.  Whereas the official forecast track shows the storm moving to the north of the islands, it now appears that the storm is going to move directly over the islands instead.

The good news for islanders is that Erika is a weak tropical storm, so they won’t have a lot to worry about in terms of wind damage.  The bad news however is that any tropical storm will produce flooding amounts of rain and they can be sure that there will be some flooding.  It is also worth noting that most deaths from tropical storms occur from floods – not wind.  So, despite the fact that Erika is a minimal tropical storm in terms of intensity, she can still be very deadly.

I was speaking to a good friend of mine who operates a ferry boat and he told me that the Captain of the Port has issued Port Condition X-Ray for St. Thomas, St. John, Culebra, and the northeast coast of Puerto Rico, meaning to prepare the port for an approaching storm.   Some of the islands are already under Port Condition “Yankee”, which means to leave the port and get to your final destinations because the ferries are returning to San Juan.  And, it is expected that shortly Port Condition “Zulu” will be ordered, which basically means “Now you’re screwed, you were told to leave – go bar the door”.

I believe that Erika will continue on a more west than north track throughout the next day at least.  She is struggling to survive however and the GFS forecast is so far well on its way to validating its earlier forecast over the actual hurricane models such as the GFDL and HWRF.   If so, Erika could be gone within 24 hours and may not be able to gain enough organization to reform back into a tropical storm.  That being said, the hurricane models still show Erika becoming a much more powerful hurricane starting in about 48-hours.  So, again – it’s going to be interesting to watch this one.

Tags: tropical season 2009