Tropical Storm Erika, still a weak and troubled system, managed to bring enough wind and rain to the Caribbean islands overnight to cause floods and mudslides that are reported to have taken at least 12 lives.
Erika’s eventual path continued to perplex forecasters who have watched its center reform several times now, each time more to the south and southwest of the projected path.
By this morning, the Florida peninsula was right in the center of the National Hurricane Center’s 5-day projected path, causing the governor of that state to declare a state of emergency.
Through today, Erika has traveled across Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, where it has encountered wind shear, dry air, and mountainous terrain — all of which are trying to pull the storm completely apart.
Forecasters now say that if Erika survives all of these unfavorable conditions, it will have only a few chances to intensify before perhaps making a landfall in Florida late Sunday or Monday.
At 5 p.m., the center of Erika was located about 95 west-northwest of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic with winds at 50 mph. Erika is forecast to weaken to a tropical depression on Saturday. Or the storm could even dissipate to a trough of low pressure during or after its passage over Hispaniola.
After that, there remains a chance of some intensification
The storm was moving west at 21 mph. The Hurricane Center says that a turn toward the west-northwest or northwest is expected tonight, with this motion continuing with a decrease in forward speed through Sunday.
On the forecast track, the center of Erika will move over the Dominican Republic and Haiti this evening and be near the southeastern Bahamas or eastern Cuba on Saturday.
Later in the weekend, the Hurricane Center is forecasting a turn to the northwest and north and a decrease in forward speed as Erika moves between the subtropical ridge and a mid- to upper-level trough over the Gulf of Mexico.
“While the track guidance is generally in good agreement,” the 5 p.m. Hurricane Center advisory said, “it should be noted that the guidance has been consistently forecasting a west-northwestward turn that has so far failed to occur. On the other hand, there is still a chance for a center to re-form farther to the north during the passage over Hispaniola. ”
The Hurricane Center held back on issuing tropical storm watches for Florida this evening, but forecasters are expecting heavy rain there over the weekend, no matter the path of Erika.
It seems unlikely at this point that the tropical storm will pull itself together enough to threaten coastal Carolina with much more than perhaps some rainy or squally weather later next week.
However, given the level of frustration forecasters have had predicting the future of this storm, it’s still a good idea to keep checking the Hurricane Center forecasts at
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/.
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