Miami – Tropical Storm Arthur, the first of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, strengthened in the last few hours and is leaving strong winds and rains in North Carolina, as the center of the system passes very close to Cape Hatteras.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Monday that Arthur increased his maximum sustained winds to 45 miles per hour.
According to the NHC bulletin at 11:00 a.m., the storm was located at that time about 20 miles east southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
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Tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 125 miles.
The Miami-based federal agency expects Arthur to produce total rainfall accumulations of up to about 5 inches off the North Carolina coast this afternoon.
“Downtown Arthur will be approaching the North Carolina coast for the next few hours, and then it will move close to or just east of the coast,” the NHC said.
The Miami-based federal agency maintains its storm warning for the North Carolina coast from Surf City to Duck, as well as Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds.
The tropical storm, which was ahead of the hurricane season that begins June 1 and ends November 30, is moving north northeast 16 miles, a slight increase in speed in recent hours.
The storm is moving toward the northwest United States.
NHC meteorologists forecast little change in strength over the next two days.
They also note that tonight it will drift away from the east coast of the United States and is likely to lose its tropical characteristics on Tuesday.
The NHC today expects a northeastward turn with an increase in forward speed, followed by an eastward turn on Tuesday.
The National Administration of Oceans and Atmosphere (NOAA, in English) is scheduled for next Thursday to announce in Miami its initial forecast for the 2020 season, which will be reviewed later.
However, other private organizations and universities have anticipated that it will be “above normal,” when the regular is twelve named storms, of which six become hurricanes, including three major ones.
The private meteorological services company AccuWeather, for example, forecasts 14 to 20 storms, of which between seven and eleven will become hurricanes, among these four to six they will reach a major category, that is, 3, 4 or 5 (the maximum) on the Saffir-Simpson scale, which measures hurricanes by the force of their winds.
For its part, Colorado State University (CSU) forecast last April that the season will be “above the annual average.”
That’s with 16 named storms, eight hurricanes, and four major ones, among others, because tropical and subtropical Atlantic temperatures are “hotter than the long-term average temperature.”
