Long Island Earl: Latest Enhanced Satellite Imagery

Not as impressive on satellite as yesterday or Wednesday, but he’s still a big storm and he’s still gonna make a mess somewhere.

It’s a Monster! Hurricane Earl Enhanced Satellite Imagery

Updated to include the latest satellite loop. 

This storm is a monster and even a glancing blow is gonna mess up some stuff.

As the weatherman says, “plans to protect life and property should be rushed to completion.”

You can see the latest update of this loop at Intellicast.

Hurricane Earl: Long Island Express II?

The 1938 Long Island Express (aka The Great Hurricane of 1938) was the first major tropical cyclone to make landfall in the coastal area of Long Island and New England since 1869.  A classic Cape Verde storm, the Express formed off the coast of Africa in mid-September.  It was believed to have reached Category 5 status on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale (the Saffir-Simpson scale wasn’t invented until 1971, but bear with me), then weakening and making landfall as a Category 3 hurricane.

On September 21, it struck just west of Mystic Beach, New York on Long Island, in the vicinity of the Fire Island National Seashore. The storm crossed the Long Island, then the sound, and struck a second time near the Bridgeport-Miflord-New Haven area.

The hurricane was estimated to have killed as many as 800 people, damaged or destroyed nearly 60,000 homes and other structures, and caused property losses estimated at $ 4.72 billion in damages (in today’s dollars)

To date it remains the most powerful, costliest and deadliest hurricane in New England history.  To date.

Hurricane Earl is on a path quite similar to the path estimated to have been followed by the Express.  See the map below. There were no satellites, no Doppler Radar, and no Hurricane Hunter aircraft in 1938.  So forecasters basically made educated guesses as to storm paths and landfall locations. The shaded area on the map is the modern day equivalent of the educated guess.

More than likely, the storm will stick to somewhere in the middle of that range.  But the National Hurricane Center takes no chances.  Appended to the end of their forecast discussion on the 11:00 am EDT forecast discussion for September 01, 2010:

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THIS IS A GOOD TIME TO REMIND EVERYONE THAT NHC AVERAGE TRACK FORECAST ERRORS ARE 200 TO 300 MILES AT DAYS 4 AND 5.  GIVEN THIS UNCERTAINTY...IT IS TOO SOON TO DETERMINE WHAT...IF  ANY...PARTS OF THE U.S. EAST COAST MIGHT SEE DIRECT IMPACTS FROM EARL LATER THIS WEEK.

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Hurricane Earl is now a monster Cat IV, RADAR loop shows entire eye wall

The bad news:  Hurricane Earl has been upgraded—again—to a Category IV storm.

The good news:  Earl has apparently started to make the long awaited turn towards the northwest, beginning the days-long recurvature process that will hopefully take the storm away from any major North American landmass.

The entire eye-wall of the storm is now clearly visible on the long range NEXRAD RADAR loop from San Juan, Puerto Rico.  On a historical note, my very first Hurricane deployment was for Hurricane Hugo, which devastated San Juan in 1989.

Here’s the latest project path of Earl’s hurricane force (+75 mph) winds.

Oh, and there’s some more bad news:  Fiona has formed in Earl’s wake, and both the CLPS and BAMD forecast models have that system entering the Gulf of Mexico.

Should either Earl or Fiona stray too far to the west in the next 24-48 hours (36-60 hours for Fiona), the area from the Outer Banks of North Carolina up to Atlantic, Nova Scotia could see Hurricane force winds by this time next week.

Earl striking the coast of the US is a longshot.  Fiona, not so much. 

As always, you can track any of these storms using the Tropical Update page, located here, which will let you see the same model forecast paths used by the National Hurricane Center.

Gimme some feedback in the comments.