Over Labor Day weekend, social media feeds are flooded with dire warnings about a major storm hitting the US East Coast next week. That hypothetical storm became Tropical Storm Lee, with sustained winds of 50 mph late Tuesday, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Before you start freaking out, it’s too early to say for sure that a major hurricane will make landfall on the Eastern Seaboard.
By Tuesday morning, Lee was a tropical depression moving west-northwest at 15 mph in the far reaches of the mid-Atlantic, where computer models run over the weekend indicated it would become a hurricane. Those models have some social media users predicting the depression will become Tropical Storm Lee and hit the US East Coast as a hurricane.
That’s understandable. Meteorologists have been watching the system since it began appearing in computer models before the holiday weekend.
If it does make landfall, it will likely begin this weekend over the Leeward Islands in the northeastern Caribbean.
Some of the biggest hurricanes to hit the East Coast An unnamed hurricane that hit Long Island in 1938Or Hugo, it is Caused a landslide in South Carolina In 1989, it began far from land in a similar part of the mid-Atlantic. The storm is expected to become a strong hurricane, if not a major hurricane, and move west toward the United States. It may make landfall in the eastern seaboard, but there is a possibility or even greater chance that it will be offshore and off the US East Coast.
Social media posts about avoiding a hypothetical storm landfall are not usually shared as much as a picture of a forecast model showing a major storm 14 days after it hits a major U.S. city. That’s why terrible posts like warning “Terrible conditions on the East Coast of the United States,” took off this weekend.
For now, there are many unknowns and many things that could change before the storm approaches North America. It looks like it will be a major storm and will move west before turning north and northeast. The question is when will it turn around?
It all has to do with the turning current, which computer forecast models from Tuesday morning indicated an earlier turn to the north and northeast. That puts Bermuda at greater risk than the United States or Canada. More data will be collected this week and more will be learned as that data is incorporated into computer models.
Although the storm will not make direct landfall anywhere, it is likely to produce large waves along the US East Coast next week. This storm is worth keeping an eye on, but there’s no need to worry about it.
