Hurricane Lee remains a Category 3 hurricane Monday night
Hurricane Lee maintained Category 3 strength at 115 mph and the forecast became more confident as it tracked northward off the East Coast.
Hurricane Lee's projected path is coming into better focus. Updated forecasts and coverage of Hurricane Lee It can be found now at this link.
With some cities in the Northeast now in the forecast cone, Hurricane Lee remains a large, major hurricane as it moves across the Atlantic.
Dangerous rip and rip currents have begun along the majority of the US East Coast and will get worse as the week continues.
As of the latest advisory from the National Hurricane Center (NHC), Hurricane Lee had maximum sustained winds of 115 mph with some higher gusts, making it a Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale.
For the first time in Lee's history, Earth was included in the forecast cone on Monday. Nantucket, Massachusetts, remained at the far northwest edge of the forecast cone while Boston was briefly inside the edge of the cone in Monday evening's NHC forecast, only to return just outside the cone in Monday night's update.
The entire coast of Maine is also now in the forecast cone as of the NHC's forecast update Monday night, though the storm is currently expected to be just below hurricane strength by the time it arrives late Saturday.
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Will Lee have any impacts on the East Coast of the United States?
While Lee is expected to move slowly as the guiding currents recede, dangerous rip and rip currents are beginning to occur along most of the East Coast of the United States and will continue throughout the week.
Beachgoers in Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, have been warned of potentially dangerous conditions this week.
According to the Cape Hatteras National Seashore Facebook page, visitors are urged to avoid swimming in the ocean until conditions improve.
“Large breaking waves, life-threatening rip currents, beach erosion, ocean inundation and coastal flooding are all possible,” CHNS said in a Facebook post. “These dangerous conditions are expected to continue through the end of this week.”
Lee will likely track between the U.S. East Coast and Bermuda, although the exact path to the north remains unclear, said Brian Norcross, a hurricane specialist at FOX Weather.
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What is the “cone of uncertainty” in hurricane forecasts?
Computer models predict that Lee will remain offshore of the East Coast, and some indicate that the mid-Atlantic and Northeast coasts may still feel the effects of the storm.
“The retreating jet stream is expected to pass near Lee on Friday, giving way to a weak bubble of high pressure north of… tornado “To influence the path of the storm before another low occurs,” Norcross said. “A weak rise can skew me towards New Britain coast. All of this could lead to Lee's path having an S-like shape. Although the curves would be slight, as things stand now, any zigzag to the left would bring stronger winds near or above the shoreline in parts of the coast. Northeast of the countryNew England and the Atlantic Canada“.
The NHC wrote in their discussion late Friday night that Lee will face some challenges later in the week — the broad wind field is mixing in some cold water from the depths below, and this area of the Atlantic is a bit cooler than previous similar upwelling operations through the recent passage. Hurricane Franklin and Tropical Storm Idalia. The storm may begin to see some additional wind shear on its northward journey due to the approaching trough.
But while the NHC's latest forecast now indicates Lee's maximum sustained winds gradually diminish as it heads northward later this week, the storm is expected to grow in size “and risks will extend farther away from the center of the storm by the end of the forecast period,” and Those in the northeast continue to watch the storm.
Where is Hurricane Lee?
Hurricane Lee is located about 410 miles north of the northern Leeward Islands and about 580 miles south of Bermuda, as of 11 p.m. EST Monday NHC.
The hurricane continues to move toward the northwest and has begun to slow down over the southwestern Atlantic Ocean. Lee's strength will remain roughly constant over the next two days, the NHC said.
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What is the expected path of Hurricane Lee?
The NHC says Lee is moving to the northwest near 7 mph, and a slow west-northwest-northwest motion is expected over the next few days, followed by a shift to the north by midweek.
On the current track, Lee is expected to pass near Bermuda, but to the west, in a few days. The storm is then expected to pass off the coast of New England and approach Nova Scotia around the weekend.
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There are currently no watches or warnings in effect for any land area, but the National Hurricane Center says interests in Bermuda need to monitor Hurricane Lee's progress.
Hurricane Lee went from Category 1 to Category 5 within 24 hours
The storm intensified rapidly and rapidly on Thursday, transforming from a Category 1 hurricane at 80 mph on Wednesday night into a Category 5 monster at 165 mph just 24 hours later.
Lee was the thirteenth Category 5 storm to ever form in the eastern Caribbean.
These hurricanes experienced rapid intensification before we made landfall
The storm experienced wind shear on Friday, weakening some of the storm's strength and dropping it to a Category 3 storm. Lee was downgraded to a Category 2 storm on Saturday but reactivated into a major hurricane on Sunday afternoon. Hurricane Lee is expected to continue strengthening as it slowly swirls in the southwestern Atlantic Ocean.
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