Tropical Storm Erin is on the verge of becoming the first hurricane of the season in the Atlantic. Forecasters with the National Hurricane Center say conditions are conducive for the storm to strengthen imminently. Erin is expected to become a hurricane by the end of Friday.
After four tropical storms so far this year, the fifth named storm of the season is expected to strengthen, becoming the first hurricane of the season and the first storm to reach that status since Hurricane Rafael formed in the southwestern Caribbean more than nine months ago. Meteorologists with the National Hurricane Center (NHC) are monitoring Tropical Storm Erin for further development on Thursday. Rafael damaged Cuba's vulnerable electrical grid when the Category 3 hurricane struck the western part of the country in early November last year.
The Thursday afternoon advisory placed Tropical Storm Erin around 790 miles east of the northern Leeward Islands. The storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 60 mph and moving west at around 17 mph.
The current forecast track has the center of Erin moving near or just north of the northern Leeward Islands over the weekend. It is still too early to say with any certainty what impacts Erin might bring to those Islands, the U.S. East Coast, or Bermuda, all places potentially in its path. The afternoon advisory includes a tropical storm watch for portions of the Leeward Islands.
"A NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft is en route to investigate the system this evening, providing information on the storm's strength and structure," according to the Thursday afternoon discussion on Erin from the NHC. Erin is expected to drift across warmer waters, increasing the likelihood of further strengthening.
"This increasingly favorable environment could result in a period of rapid intensification," forecasters mentioned in an earlier discussion. The NHC expects Erin to become a hurricane tonight or Friday.
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Evidence is mounting that rapid intensification (often known as "RI") of tropical cyclones, particularly just before landfall, is becoming increasingly common in the United States.
"The financial losses from storms that undergo RI near landfall are significantly higher than storms that do not meet this criteria even after normalizing for landfall intensity," concluded
After a quiet start to the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, unusually warm water in the Atlantic and Gulf could quickly rev up tropical cyclone activity. A peer-reviewed study by Climate Central determined that most Atlantic hurricanes from 2019 to 2023 gained strength from an overheating planet, and in 2024, this trend extended to every observed hurricane.
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Definitely 🥰 NOAA's revised Atlantic Hurricane Season forecast was released near the historical peak of the hurricane season, in early August. The agency's forecasters "updated the number of expected named storms to 13-18 (with winds of 39 mph or greater), of which 5-9 could become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or greater), including 2-5 major hurricanes (winds of 111 mph or greater)," according to their latest forecast.
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"The Trump administration has slashed the number of employees at many of the agencies traditionally responsible for planning for and responding to natural disasters, including NOAA, the Weather Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency," reported the New York Times. Those sweeping changes are a potential hurdle for forecasters with the NHC that could impact the accuracy of their predictions.
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