Could Idalia make a loop and revisit the Southeast next week?
After making landfall in Florida’s Big Bend as a Category 3 hurricane Wednesday morning, Idalia is now racing through the Southeast. It is expected to emerge off the coast of the Carolinas on Thursday, still a formidable tropical storm.
Usually when storms leave the Carolinas, they’re quickly whisked out to sea and away from the United States. But not necessarily with Idalia.
Idalia may instead meander close to the Southeast coast for several days. There is a slim possibility that it will turn back to the west next week, forming a loop, and again menace the southeast United States. On Monday and Tuesday, some model projections showed this scenario. However, Wednesday’s models have backed off that idea and suggest it should move far enough offshore to be of little worry beyond generating some rough surf for the East Coast.
The reason Idalia needs to be watched after exiting the Carolinas is that the same jet stream dip that steered Idalia into Florida will try to leave it behind as it sweeps rapidly to the east. The jet will scoop up Hurricane Franklin in the process, pushing it well out to sea. But Idalia may not get captured.
How far offshore Idalia gets will depend on the strength of the tug of this jet. Afterward, high pressure will probably fill the void to the north of Idalia, attempting to trap the storm off the East Coast.
The five-day forecast from the National Hurricane Center shows the storm slowing down into this weekend and bending southward for a time west of Bermuda. After that, the forecast projects it will resume heading eastward, potentially allowing it to escape into the North Atlantic.
Share this articleShare“Uncertainty in the track forecast beyond 48 hours remains quite large,” the Hurricane Center wrote Tuesday morning.
Given weak steering currents associated with the building high-pressure zone to its north, Idalia could wander aimlessly for some time. The farther east it gets, the lower the odds that it turns back toward the United States in any meaningful way.
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The majority of hurricane models now take Idalia eastward after it meanders offshore. Of the dozens of simulations in the European and American modeling systems, only a small minority now forecast the storm to track back toward the United States next week.
If Idalia were to make a loop, it would have some company. Another infamous I-named storm followed a similarly strange course.
In 2004, Hurricane Ivan made landfall near the Alabama-Florida border. From there it traveled to the Mid-Atlantic and off the coast, before drifting southward and returning to the Gulf of Mexico. A week after its first landfall, Ivan became a weak tropical storm once more as it tracked toward Louisiana.
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