Experts say that Hurricane Lee is rewriting old rules of meteorology
Hurricane Lee is rewriting old rules of meteorology, leaving experts astonished at how rapidly it grew into a goliath Category 5 hurricane.
Lee could also be a dreadful harbinger of what is to come as ocean temperatures climb, spawning fast-growing major hurricanes that could threaten communities farther north and farther inland, experts say.
“Hurricanes are getting stronger at higher latitudes,” said Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgia’s Atmospheric Sciences Program and a past president of the American Meteorological Society. “If that trend continues, that brings into play places like Washington, D.C., New York and Boston.”
As the oceans warm, they act as jet fuel for hurricanes.
“That extra heat comes back to manifest itself at some point, and one of the ways it does is through stronger hurricanes,” Shepherd said.
During the overnight hours on Thursday, Lee shattered the standard for what meteorologists call rapid intensification — when a hurricane’s sustained winds increase by 35 mph (56 kph) in 24 hours.
“This one increased by 80 mph (129 kph),” Shepherd said. “I can’t emphasize this enough — we used to have this metric of 35 mph, and here’s a storm that did twice that amount and we’re seeing that happen more frequently,” said Shepherd, who describes what happened with Lee as “hyper-intensification.”
With super-warm ocean temperatures and low wind shear, “all the stars were aligned for it to intensify rapidly,” said Kerry Emanuel, professor emeritus of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Category 5 status — when sustained winds are at least 157 mph or 253 kph — is quite rare.
