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It’s a beautiful morning on St. John, but lurking to our southeast is Tropical Storm Erika. St. John as well as the rest of the US and British Virgin Islands are under a tropical storm watch with TS Erika presently predicted to be centered somewhere near St. Croix later on this afternoon or early this evening.

Hurricane Hunters flying inside the storm have reported reported surface winds of 45 mph.

The future track of the storm may be determined by its intensity. According to Dr. Jeff Masters, “A stronger Erika will extend higher into the atmosphere and be steered more to the northwest by upper-level winds. A weaker Erika will be steered more by the low-level winds, which will keep the storm on a more westerly track.”

Tropical Storm Erika, described as weak and disorganized,may be downgraded to a tropical depression in the next few days, however, “even if Erika loses its tropical cyclone status…it could maintain
vigorous deep convection which would produce very heavy rains over the northern Lesser Antilles and Puerto Rico.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 at 7:40 am and is filed under St. John USVI, St. John Virgin Islands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.