Warming oceans could help form much more powerful hurricanes, climate experts warn. Info about weather forecast New York today.

Hurricane Lee is rewriting the old rules of meteorology, leaving experts amazed at how quickly it has become a powerful Category 5 cyclone.

Lee could also be a dire harbinger of things to come as ocean temperatures rise, leading to fast-growing hurricanes that could threaten communities further north and inland, experts warn.

"Hurricanes are strengthening at higher latitudes," said Marshall Shepherd, director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia and former president of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). "If that trend continues, places like Washington, D.C., New York and Boston will be in play,"

And as the oceans warm, they act as fuel for hurricanes because "that additional heat comes back to manifest itself at some point, and one of the ways it does that is through stronger hurricanes," he said. Shepherd.

During the overnight hours of Thursday, Lee shattered the standard for what meteorologists call rapid intensification, when a hurricane's sustained winds increase by 35 mph in 24 hours.

"This (hurricane) increased by 129 kilometers per hour. We used to have this 35 mph metric, and here we have a storm that doubled that amount and we see this happening more frequently," Shepherd said, describing what happened with Lee as "hyper -intensification".

With superwarm ocean temperatures and low wind shear, "all conditions were conducive to rapid intensification," explained Kerry Emanuel, professor emeritus of atmospheric sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Threats within

Category 5, when sustained winds are at least 155 mph, is quite rare. Only about 4.5% of named storms in the Atlantic Ocean have become Category 5 in the past decade, according to Brian McNoldy, a hurricane scientist and researcher at the University of Miami.

More intense major hurricanes also threaten communities further inland, as monster storms can become so powerful that they remain dangerous hurricanes at greater distances over land.

"I think it's an under-told story," Shepherd said. "As these storms are strong as they reach the coast, in some cases they move fast enough to remain hurricanes inland."

Hurricane Idalia was the most recent example, when it made landfall in the Florida Panhandle last month and remained a hurricane as it entered southern Georgia.

It then hit the city of Valdosta in Georgia more than 70 miles away from where it made landfall. At least 80 homes in the Valdosta area were destroyed and hundreds were damaged.

In 2018, Hurricane Michael followed a similar path of destruction inland, devastating cotton and walnut crops and leaving widespread damage in southern Georgia.

Risk for New England

Although it is too early to know how close Lee could approach the US East Coast, New Englanders are watching the storm closely, as some models have projected it could track dangerously close to that area. especially in Maine.

It has been 69 years since a major hurricane made landfall in New England.

On September 8, 1869, a Category 3 hurricane known as "the Gale of September 1869" hit Rhode Island, the National Weather Service in Boston recalled on Friday. The storm cut all telegraph lines between Boston and New York and capsized a schooner, killing 11 crew members.

"If Lee does make landfall in New England, there's no doubt the storm surge will be a big threat," he said.

Big waves

As Lee churns up the ocean approaching the US East Coast, it could bring rough seas and rip currents along the East Coast.

"What we'll see with Lee, and we're very confident about this, is that it's going to be a big wave producer," Mike Brennan, director of the National Hurricane Center, said in a briefing Friday.

"This morning, the highest significant wave height we were looking at at Lee was between 13 and 15 meters, and the highest waves could even double that," Brennan said. "So we could be talking about 80- or 90-foot waves associated with Lee."

Emanuel was tracking the storm this weekend in New Harbor, Maine. Since it's been so long since any kind of hurricane warning was issued in New England, some residents might be complacent and think hurricanes are just a Florida or Louisiana problem, she said.

"You worry if they'll take you seriously when the time comes," she said.

Forecasters will be watching for any possible interactions in the coming days between Lee and the newly formed Tropical Storm Margot, which is expected to become a hurricane next week.

It's possible that Margot could alter Lee's trajectory, although it's too early to tell if that will happen, experts say.

Margot is well east of Lee, but as Margot strengthens, it could affect weather systems in the region that guide hurricanes.

A phenomenon known as the Fujiwhara Effect can occur when two tropical storms rotate around each other, but that doesn't mean they will in this case, Emanuel said. However, if it happens, the two storms could push each other in the Atlantic, which could alter their tracks.