Storm Margot Model Shows Path as Strength Gathers

A tropical storm in the Atlantic Ocean is being tracked by the National Hurricane Center, in anticipation of it becoming a hurricane.

Tropical storm Margot, which is currently in the mid-Atlantic, is “expected to become a hurricane tonight,” according to a National Hurricane Center advisory on September 11.

“At 900 AM GMT (0900 UTC), the center of Tropical Storm Margot was located near latitude 25.3 North, longitude 40.0 West. Margot is moving toward the north near 8 mph (13 km/h), and this general motion is expected to continue during the next several days,” the advisory said. The location puts it hundreds of miles off the U.S. coast.

“Strengthening is forecast during the next 48 hours, and Margot is likely to become a hurricane tonight.”

The storm’s winds are peaking at around 65 mph, and affect a radius of about 90 miles around the center, and models show it strengthening as it moves northwards over the next few days.

Tropical storms form due to areas of lower pressure forming over the warm tropical ocean waters, causing air to rise. This may result in clusters of thunderstorms, due to the moist and rapidly rising air, which will begin to spin because of the rotation of the Earth. Depending on the sea surface temperatures and humidity, this may then develop into a tropical storm.

These storms are reclassified as hurricanes once wind speeds reach 74 mph or over, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“There are a few main environmental factors that influence how powerful a storm can get. The most popular factor is the temperature of the ocean water beneath the storm,” Sam Lillo, a forecast engineer at DTN Weather, previously told Newsweek.

“Wind blowing over water causes an exchange of moisture into the atmosphere, encouraging the growth of deep clouds and heating that intensifies low pressure at the surface, ultimately strengthening the winds and furthering this feedback loop. The warmer the water is, the more moisture and heat that can fuel the storm, and the stronger this feedback process becomes.”

As the storm gets more powerful and increases in speed, it may be upgraded from a category 1 hurricane to a category 2 (96-110 mph), category 3 (111-129 mph), category 4 (130-156 mph) or even category 5 (over 157 mph).

The storm may eventually move over land, where it can cause huge amounts of flooding, property damage and loss of life, as seen with Hurricane Idalia and Tropical Storm Hilaryearlier this year.

“The track of the storm is determined by the environmental winds which steer the vortex. What can introduce uncertainty in the track forecast is when these steering winds vary across a short distance,” Lillo said.

“So for example, if the storm drifts just a little north or south, it could dramatically change what steering winds are influencing it. Also, sometimes when a new storm forms and is weak and not quite consolidated yet, the center of the storm can wobble around a lot, again changing what the environmental winds are that subsequently steers it forward. This is why spaghetti model plots are so useful. We can visualize a range of possible outcomes and how much spread or uncertainty is inherent in the forecast.”

Storm Margot does not appear to be headed toward the U.S. or any other landmass, instead moving northwards through the Atlantic, where it may peter out and therefore not cause any significant hazards to the Eastern Seaboard. Meanwhile, Hurricane Lee is edging towards the U.S.—the Atlantic hurricane season runs from around June 1 to November 30, so there may be many more hurricanes making their way toward the coast in the coming months.

With the effects of climate change, it is expected that hurricanes will get stronger and cause increasing amounts of damage when they make landfall.

“Climate change is clearly increasing the upper limit on hurricane strength and rain rate due to both the increasing temperature of the ocean, which provides the energy for the storms, and the increasing temperature of the atmosphere, which allows for more intense rain,” Mathew Barlow, a professor of environmental earth and atmospheric sciences at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, previously told Newsweek.

“Additionally, the warming increases average sea levels and so makes storm surge worse. Other aspects are less clear, including possible increases or decreases in the overall number of hurricanes in a year, although we do expect the proportion of hurricanes that are major storms to increase.”

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