Tropical Storm Ian continues to jog across the west central Caribbean with slightly less wind shear. That should allow the system to get better organized into Sunday. It’s also heading into extremely warm water (even warmer than usual for this time of year)! The result of those variables will likely lead to the storm “rapidly intensifying” over the next couple of days. The National Hurricane Center has Ian becoming a hurricane either Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening. While over the NW Caribbean, the system could quickly gather steam and even “explode” into a major hurricane (category 3, or higher) by late Monday.
The latest trends suggest Ian will track away from south Florida, which would have us avoiding a direct hit. Could there still be impacts, though, from this future hurricane? It seems so, yes. We sometimes refer to them as “side effects” or fringe impacts. In this case they’d include heavy bands of rain lifted into our region with passing squalls possible. Meanwhile, gusty winds could also be a factor in the Tuesday to Wednesday time frame. Of course, the farther away the system tracks, the lesser impacts will be, locally.
The longer range forecast for Ian includes a future path putting parts of Florida’s Gulf coast in the line of fire. It’s too early to project exactly where the center may go (and where landfall may be, eventually). Still, very vulnerable areas appear to be Florida’s Big Bend or potentially the Panhandle. Stay tuned as we continue to monitor Ian’s movement and bring you regular updates on Channel 7 and on our various media tools.
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