Hurricane Bertha is back at Category 2 status, and appears destined to become one of the longest-lasting July hurricanes on record.
Hurricane Emily
of 2005 spent seven full days at hurricane strength in July, which I
believe is the record. Bertha is halfway there. The storm is in no
hurry to recurve out to sea, and will spend 3-4 more days over waters
warm enough to maintain it at hurricane intensity. At that time, wind
shear is expected to increase to 30 knots, which should knock Bertha
down to tropical storm status. The models continue to show that Bertha
may slow down and move erratically this weekend, and possibly threaten
Bermuda. By the middle of next week, Bertha should be headed towards
the Maritime Provinces of Canada, and may affect them as a tropical
storm.
Figure 1.
This natural-color image of Hurricane Bertha was captured by the
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra
satellite on July 9, 2008, at 14:45 UTC (10:45 a.m. Eastern Daylight
Time). Shortly after, the National Hurricane Center estimated that
Bertha was a Category 1 storm, with maximum sustained wind speeds of 75
miles per hour. Bertha was compact when MODIS observed it, a small ball
of clouds with a long line of thunderstorms trailing away to the
southeast. The eye of the storm had clouded over. Image credit:
NASA.
Elsewhere in the tropicsThere
are no threat areas to discuss in the tropical Atlantic. The ECMWF
model is predicting that a tropical depression may form between Africa
and the Lesser Antilles Islands in seven days. The UKMET and GFS have
shown a similar development during various runs over the past two days,
but their current runs are showing just a strong tropical disturbance
in this region next week. Stay tuned.
I'll post an update Friday morning.
Jeff Masters
