Just days after Hurricane Ida left a staggering, multi-state trail of destruction, forecasters were keeping a wary eye Sunday on another storm steaming across the Atlantic that could be even more ferocious.
Now a Category 3 hurricane, Larry could intensify into a Category 4 storm, possibly by Sunday, Accuweather meteorologists said. A Category 4 hurricane, as Ida was when it made landfall in Louisiana, has sustained winds of 130 to 156 mph. If Larry’s sustained winds increase above 150 mph, it will become the strongest storm in the Atlantic this year – even more potent than Ida, Accuweather said.
The storm was expected to churn across the open waters of the Atlantic for several more days. Still, it could eventually approach Bermuda around mid-week and move close to North America. “At this point, Larry will most likely miss the United States and stay a few hundred miles away from the Northeast coast,” Accuweather said.
Larry was located about 830 miles east of the Northern Leeward Islands on Sunday afternoon, moving to the northwest at 13 mph. The National Hurricane Center said that maximum sustained winds were 125 mph, with higher gusts. Still, much of the eastern U.S. coast could feel Larry’s effects by midweek: Major swells from the storm are “likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions,” the hurricane center said.
“Little change in strength is forecast during the next few days, although fluctuations in intensity will be possible. Larry is expected to remain a major hurricane through the middle of this week,” the center said. The storm is a large hurricane; the center said: Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 45 miles from the center, and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 175 miles.
‘Life-threatening’ surf: Hurricane Larry forecast to bring ‘life-threatening surf and rip current conditions’ to East Coast
Still in the dark: Week after Hurricane Ida’s landfall, hundreds of thousands are still without power.
Larry became the fifth and third major hurricane last week in an already-rough Atlantic hurricane season: 12 named storms. The season runs from June 1 through Nov. 30; the peak is Friday.
“We’re running well ahead of schedule, especially for named storms,” Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach told USA TODAY. On average, through Aug. 31, he said there would usually be about six named storms, including tropical storms and hurricanes.
Klotzbach said the U.S. is also running ahead in the number of named storms making landfall. We’ve had five: Danny, Elsa, Fred, Henri, and Ida. Based on past averages, Klotzbach said the typical number of landfalls in this period is two. Leading hurricane forecasts from AccuWeather and Weather.com agree that 2021 will experience higher-than-normal activity.
Hurricane season update:2021 hurricane season is half over: After an intense start, is there more to come in September? Larry could last well into the second week of September and become the longest-lived named system so far this season, Accuweather said.
In the Ida-battered Southeast, forecasters watched a brewing system forecast to move northwestward over the southwestern Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, then slowly northward or northeastward over the western or central Gulf. The hurricane center said upper-level winds were only expected to be “marginally conducive” for tropical cyclone formation, but some slow development is possible. Even if low growth doesn’t materialize, the system could bring heavy rains midweek.
