Humberto rapidly intensifies, soon-to-be Imelda heading for Bahamas

Friday afternoon satellite image of Potential Tropical Cyclone Nine (left) and Major Hurricane Humberto (right).

As forecast, Humberto rapidly intensified and is now the season's third major hurricane.  But incredibly, it's also only the season's third hurricane! It has been 90 years since the first three hurricanes all became major hurricanes.  For additional context, the average date of third major hurricane formation is October 28 -- this is over a month ahead of climatology.

And it's not finished yet... as of Friday afternoon the intensity is up to 100 kt (lower threshold of Category 3) but is forecast to reach 130 kt by Sunday morning (mid-range of Category 4).  Fortunately, the forecast track will keep it away from land. It will create some problems for Bermuda on Tuesday, but it will likely not be a direct hit.

Also on Friday afternoon, Invest 94L was designated as Potential Tropical Cyclone Nine.  It's still really just an Invest, but this designation allows NHC to issue watches and warnings -- tropical storm watches and warnings are now in effect for the northern and central Bahamas. It is forecast to become a tropical depression and tropical storm this weekend.  The next name on the list is Imelda.

But here's where things get extremely tricky. It's entirely possible that PTC9 (future Imelda) never even reaches the US coast. Quite a number of models indicate that it could interact with Hurricane Humberto and get sent back out to sea in a process called the "Fujiwhara effect"... I have some extra background info on this in a thread on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/bmcnoldy.bsky.social/post/3lzlompr3vk2e

Below I show the most recent forecast tracks from the European model ensemble (left) and the American model ensemble (right).  There is a rather sizable percentage of members that show this Fujiwhara interaction (the tracks that make a right turn before or nearly reaching the US coast).

So, there is clearly an ENORMOUS amount of uncertainty after the weekend, and that has implications for what could be a terrible flooding event in the southeast US.  The current rainfall outlook over the coming week is shown below, and there are some significant totals possible in the Carolinas, including areas still recovering from Hurricane Helene-induced flooding last September.

Elsewhere across the basin, there are no areas of interest in the foreseeable future.

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