Hurricane Dorian Strengthens As It Targets Florida And Southeast U.S.

The forecast for Hurricane Dorian continues to be ominous and serious, particularly in Florida, even as the specifics as to exactly where it will strike remain highly uncertain.

Dorian rapidly strengthened Friday into Friday night, growing into “an extremely dangerous” Category 4 storm with winds of 140 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. This intensification trend is forecast to continue, taking the storm to just shy of Category 5 intensity on Saturday, with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph.

Hurricane Dorian gained Category 4 intensity faster than expected, illustrating the complexities involved in anticipating periods of rapid intensification. As of 11 p.m., the storm was positioned about 545 miles east of West Palm Beach and heading west-northwest at 10 mph. It’s spinning above warm waters, which act as fuel for the storm, all along its track.

In its 11 p.m. advisory, the Hurricane Center wrote that “... all indications are that Dorian will remain an extremely powerful hurricane for the next several days." The northwest Bahamas are expected to take a direct hit from the storm in its most fearsome state on Saturday night and Sunday, with the potential for “A prolonged period of life-threatening storm surge and devastating hurricane-force winds,” the NHC stated.

By the time Dorian nears Florida on Labor Day into Tuesday, it is still forecast to be a Category 4 storm, given warm waters and few obstacles in its path, such as wind shear, that might weaken it some.

However, Dorian’s exact path — which for days has proved difficult to pin down — remains elusive. And it has major implications for how severely Florida is affected as well as other states in the Southeast.

By the time Dorian reaches the northwestern Bahamas on Sunday and Monday, the Hurricane Center calls for steering currents to “collapse,” making for a “highly uncertain” track forecast.

A “small deviation in the track could bring the core of the powerful hurricane well inland over Florida, keep it near the coast, or offshore,” it wrote in its 5 p.m. Friday bulletin. Some computer model guidance shows that Hurricane Dorian could make an earlier turn to the north to parallel the Florida coastline, which could avoid a landfall of the storm’s center. However, unless Dorian follows a track well offshore of Florida, the storm has the potential to unleash damaging winds, flooding rains and a life-threatening storm surge, which is the storm-driven rise in water above normally dry land at the coast.

“Although the official forecast track has been nudged northeastward to near the east coast of Florida the risk of significant impacts over much of the Florida peninsula remains high,” the Hurricane Center stated in a forecast discussion posted online.

The storm surge will be exacerbated by naturally occurring astronomical high tides, which are some of the highest of the year this weekend into early next week. The surge threat could extend northward to Georgia and the Carolinas by Tuesday and Wednesday.

Hurricane Dorian is forecast to move slowly as it approaches Florida and makes a north turn, which could bring a prolonged period of high winds and battering waves onto the state’s highly populated eastern coastline. The Hurricane Center warns that parts of Florida could see “a prolonged period of storm surge, high winds, and heavy rainfall” as Dorian could take more than two days to spread its wrath ashore and then crawl up the peninsula.

The slow-motion storm would not only prolong the hours of punishing hurricane-force winds, but also expose the coast to numerous high-tide cycles, increasing the magnitude and duration of coastal flooding, and weakening coastal infrastructure.

Hurricane conditions could endure an entire day or longer in some locations if the eyewall, where the storm’s most intense winds are located, comes ashore.

Depending on the storm’s forward speed, rainfall amounts could become extreme, with totals easily eclipsing 10 inches over large areas and potentially exceeding two feet in spots, according to some model projections. Such amounts would lead to major freshwater flooding, which has become the biggest killer in hurricanes in recent years.

Inland areas of Florida, in addition to the coast, face potentially damaging winds and tremendous rainfall.

If Dorian strikes Florida’s east coast as a Category 4, it would be the strongest to make landfall there since Hurricane Andrew in 1992 but will be moving at a much slower pace.