Hurricane Erin strengthens to a Category 5 in just 24 hours

AccuWeather

Being a Category 1 hurricane, Erin underwent a 'rapid intensification' which helped the storm to grow and strengthen to a powerful Category 5. AccuWeather's Melissa Constanzer explains how.

Transcript

00:00So let's talk a little bit about the rapid intensification we had overnight.

00:03We were looking for that moisture Friday morning. We didn't have it. That is a different ball game

00:08right now and it's because of that moisture envelope. So I talked about some of those

00:12clouds on the southwestern side kind of adding into that moisture and if you look while the

00:16center of the hurricane is here, look at how far the blues extend now off towards the northwest

00:20where Aaron is headed. You can see how we have gotten rid of the dry air. We've just kind of

00:26eroded it there in those locations. So now it has its own moisture bubble to continue to move

00:32through. So we've checked that off the list. We also have plenty of warm water. Let's face it,

00:36this time of year in the southwest Atlantic. So those are things that we'll continue to watch

00:40but that is all part of the reason why you're hearing the term rapid intensification because

00:45all those things aligned and why this is still a strengthening storm at this point too.

00:50Where does it go from here? Well we know that hurricanes want to take their energy to the

00:54poles. There is that northward progression around the Bermuda High but it should get picked up by

01:00a dip in the jet stream for the middle of the week. What that will do is send it out to sea away from

01:04New England. There is still some concerns obviously for the coast of North Carolina and some of that

01:10will depend too on how the storm regenerates itself. We go through eye wall replacements on these types

01:17of hurricanes. What happens is those eye walls have to kind of regenerate from the inside and they're like

01:22shedding skin on a snake. They continue to move outward and we see these regenerations. It can be

01:28like jumping the top on the table. It actually transitions the movement of that eye itself. So we

01:32will watch the storm continue to curve its way northward. The eye path there taking it as a major

01:38hurricane likely staying offshore with hopefully no direct U.S. landfall but there are other concerns.

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