Overnight Friday into Saturday morning, the unusually warm waters is expected to allow Joaquin to strengthen into a category 3 hurricane with 115 miles per hour winds as it starts to turn north.
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Hurricane Joaquin has rapidly gained strength in the last 24 hours and is now a Category 3 storm heading toward the central Bahamas.
Joaquin strengthened into a major hurricane on Wednesday night, the U.S. National Hurricane Center announced.
The northeast and central Bahama islands are under hurricane warning, and the south islands are under a tropical storm watch. That area could see total rain accumulations of 10 to 15 inches because of the storm. Authorities said the center was likely to pass near or over several islands during the night and Thursday.
But the most destructive weather pattern so far this year was Tropical Storm Erika, which killed around 30 people and caused extensive damage in August on the small Caribbean island of Dominica.
The forecast calls for a slight chance of showers during the day Thursday with rain getting heavier after 4 p.m. Rainfall amounts of between a quarter and half of an inch are possible before it gets really wet Friday.
“Confidence in the details of the forecast after 72 hours remains low”, the hurricane center said in an online forecast. Heavy rain has been moving through northern New England and a flood warning was issued for parts of Maine and New Hampshire.
A complicated atmospheric pattern has made Joaquin particularly hard to track, according to Weather Channel forecasters, who said it was too soon to determine what impact Joaquin could have on the U.S. East Coast starting this weekend.
“A significant adjustment to the forecast has been made this afternoon, and this shows an increased threat to the mid-Atlantic states and the Carolinas”, forecasters wrote in a “Key Messages” section of the 5 p.m. discussion.
They can cause coastal flooding and burst river banks because of the torrential rains they typically bring.
Chesapeake and Suffolk officials said their cities were taking the same measures and closely monitoring the storm.
Hurricane Joaquin may be the first storm of the 2015 hurricane season to make landfall in the US.
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Simpson expects the predictions on the storm’s exact track to improve as the National Weather Service releases additional weather balloons today to gather more information on its winds and intensity.
