East Coast on edge as Hurricane Lee whips north with 150mph winds

10 September 2023 , 04:02

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It's unclear if the storm will hit land the US yet (Image: nhc.noaa.gov)

Hurricane Lee is getting closer to the US East Coast, and as it slowly chugs along, the massively powerful Category 4 storm has incited widespread fear among East Coast dwellers.

But it remains uncertain what the actual trajectory of the storm will be or whether it will actually reach the US mainland at all. It's moving at 13 mph (20.9km/h), and the trajectory depicted on the National Hurricane Center's website shows it veering north after about five days, up towards Bermuda and away from the Floridian coast.

Lee also weakened to a Category 4 from a Category 5, which it reached earlier in the week. The winds churning near the epicentre are still around 150 mph (241.4km/h), however, which is just below the 157 mph threshold for Category 5. It's expected to remain just as strong for the next five days, the graph on the NHC's website shows, but the trajectory seems to remain uncertain — it changed already from last week, when the storm was predicted to batter Puerto Rico by Friday or Saturday. Instead, the massive cyclone veered northward, missing the Leeward Islands and Puerto Rico.

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Hurricane Lee was downgraded earlier this week (nhc.noaa.gov)

It remains unclear whether it will even hit Bermuda, which appears to be close to the storm's projected path, though the island nation is far enough away that the storm likely wouldn't reach it for almost a week, which is further out than the centre forecasts.

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Lee is currently about 500 miles (804.7km) north of the Leeward Islands, though horrendous winds are causing surges in the surf and life-threatening rip currents. Those same effects are expected to hit other, nearby islands in the next few days, including Puerto Rico, though the storm itself will miss them.

The White House announced on Thursday that resources and assets from the US's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have been deployed to the territories to mitigate any damages that might occur from the immense waves likely to hit the islands.

Whether or not Lee will actually hit the US mainland on the East Coast is still up in the air, and forecasters have been debating that for days. The northward turn predicted by the NHC is also under fire — not regarding whether or not the storm will actually turn north but when it will do so.

And the timing of the turn will determine the impact the storm will have on the East Coast, Fox News meteorologist Stephanie van Oppen told the New York Post, who herself predicted that the storm will miss states like Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina altogether.

She said it's still too early to determine whether it will batter New York City and Boston, though she believes it's "very unlikely that a direct impact is going to occur."

Lee is followed by budding Tropical Storm Margot, which just formed off the coast of Cabo Verde in Africa. Margot is expected to also strengthen into a hurricane sometime next week, though it's too early to tell what its trajectory will be.

Jeremiah Hassel