After Invest 97 formed over the weekend, it developed into Tropical Storm Erin on Monday, August 14, in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. It is currently moving over a relatively cool ocean and is interacting with some Saharan dust but it is expected to move over more favorable conditions in the next few days and is predicted to become a major hurricane by this weekend, when it is expected to track north of Puerto Rico on Sunday. After that, most of the hurricane forecast models indicate it is likely to turn to the north, which will keep it away from land (except perhaps Bermuda).
However, if Erin stay weak, it is less likely to make the turn to the north, and could head in a more northwesterly direction that could bring it closer to the US. There are just a few models indicating this possibility at the moment (less than 5 percent), but they have been trending a little bit south and west over the day, so it is too early to absolutely rule out any impacts, although the likelihood of any issues remains very small at this point. There is still plenty of time to watch the storm move westward and develop before any concerns or actions are necessary, it is just something to watch at this point. Don’t let social media posts showing a single model hurricane hitting the US scare you, because this is just one of a hundred other model tracks and the rest of them show something much different. In the next model run, the hurricane could be in a completely different place or nowhere at all.
After Erin moves through, the tropics look quiet for several days but there are some new waves moving west across Africa that have the potential to turn into tropical systems once they get over water. We are approaching the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season on September 10, but there is a lot of the season still to come after that and NOAA reiterated on August 7 that they think an above-average number of named storms is likely this year, so there should be plenty to watch in the next few months.
