Hurricane watchers provide surprising update on storm Nadine
Americans are fascinated by Storm Nadine, which had the potential to develop into a hurricane and hit Florida while the state was still recovering from Milton.
The storm, formally known as Invest A94L, has been brewing in the Atlantic Ocean for more than a week and is gaining strength as it moves west toward the US.
The National Hurricane Center showed Tuesday that the low-pressure system had a 60 percent chance of becoming a tropical storm.
But Thursday’s NHC update suggested Nadine could be dead – the chance of a storm is slim, at 30 percent over the next seven days.
For the system to be named Nadine, it would have to exceed wind speeds of 69 kilometers per hour, but it is only moving at a speed of 32 kilometers per hour.
However, the NHC report was likely welcomed by the Caribbean islands where Nadine was predicted to make landfall and cause life-threatening consequences.
Although the hurricane tracking agency showed the odds are not in the storm’s favor, meteorologists told DailyMail.com that “Mother Nature is unpredictable.”
Meteorologists have been keeping a close eye on this AL94 and its potential to impact Florida and other coastal states over the past week, as Americans turn away from Helene and Milton
“Showers and thunderstorms associated with a low-pressure trough a few hundred miles east of the Leeward Islands remain unorganized,” the NHC said in a 2 p.m. ET update.
“Slow development is possible over the next few days as the disturbance moves rapidly westward to west-northwestward, around 30 km per hour,” the agency added.
The storm should pass the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico on Friday, and Hispaniola and the southeastern Bahamas on Saturday.
“Strong winds at higher levels should end chances of development late this weekend,” the NHC said.
The latest potential of a future Nadine came Tuesday evening when AccuWeather forecasters issued a tropical storm warning, indicating the systems could bring “life-threatening” mudslides to Puerto Rico and power outages in the Dominic Republic.
It was forecast that precipitation could reach up to 50 centimeters in northern areas of Hispaniola, along with wind speeds of 140 kilometers per hour.
Experts also said the tropical rainstorm’s onshore winds would produce “rough surf, rip currents and coastal flooding along the Atlantic coast, from the Florida Keys and South Florida to the Georgia coast.”
AccuWeather Lead Hurricane Expert Alex DaSilva said in a statement: “We have been monitoring a tropical wave as it moved off the coast of Africa earlier this month.
Category 3 Hurricane Milton made landfall on Florida’s west coast on October 9, lashing the state with winds of more than 100 miles per hour, tornadoes, storm surge and up to 18 inches of rain.
“This feature has shown some signs of organization in recent days, but could enter a much more favorable area for tropical development this week as it approaches the Leeward Islands in the northeastern Caribbean.”
While it is still possible that AL94 could become Tropical Storm Nadine, experts have said this is unlikely.
“A forecaster at the NHC takes into account predictions from multiple computer models, along with observations of the clouds and wind structure of the tropical disturbance, to assign the probability of formation,” said Brian Tang, associate professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of New York. in Albany, told Newsweek.
“A 20 to 30 percent chance of formation indicates a small chance that the tropical disturbance will develop into a tropical depression or storm in the coming week,” he said.
A storm is classified as a tropical depression when the wind circulation organizes into a cyclone and reaches wind speeds of up to 60 km/h.
Tropical storms are stronger. they form when a cyclone reaches wind speeds between 60 and 120 km/h.
A cyclone with wind speeds of more than 120 km per hour is considered a hurricane. Hurricanes that reach Category 3 or higher are considered “major” and have wind speeds of more than 110 miles per hour.
Category 3 Milton made landfall on Florida’s west coast on October 9, pummeling the state with winds of more than 100 miles per hour, a barrage of tornadoes, catastrophic storm surges and up to 18 inches of rain in some areas.
At least 17 people were killed by the storm, with some estimates as high as 24.
Milton followed Hurricane Helene, which struck the southeastern U.S. two weeks earlier and inundated states along the coast with flooding.
Helene has cost between $30.5 billion and $47.5 billion in total damage across 16 states, according to CoreLogic, and has claimed the lives of more than 230 people to date, with countless others still listed as missing.
While the chances that storm system AL94 will become the next named storm are diminishing, the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season is far from over, experts warn.
The season runs through November 30 and conditions are still favorable for storm formation.