Bertha Strengthens to a Category 3 Hurricane

Bertha has gone through a major increase in strength today. The storm moved into warmer sea surface temperature waters (27C-28C) and moderate to low wind shear (15-20 knots) and quickly strengthened from the first hurricane of the season to a major hurricane in 12 hours. But here is the good news, it looks like this system is headed out to sea.

Only a few models are currently predicting that this system will move further westward without a northerly component. A strong ridge is above the system, and will likely continue to push the storm to the northwest or westnorthwest over the next day or two. However, a frontal boundary, and the system itself, will beat on this ridge, causing it to weaken, allowing the system to move off to the north and then out to sea, which most of the models agree with. The GFDL and HWRF, the most trusted and specifically designed hurricane models, want to take Bertha north and off to the east of Bermuda. Just 12 hours ago the National Hurricane Center was thinking this storm would travel between Bermuda and the United States, but now even they are trending towards to eastern solution. I agree with them that this storm is going to be a 'fish' as many people call them, a storm that does not impact a large land mass.

The rapid intensification has occured as the wall feature cleared up in the last 6 hours, and new wall cycles often last from 18-36 hours. This means the system still has plenty of time to strengthen in the condusive environment for the next 24-36 hours. I expect we will likely see a high end category 3, or low end category 4 hurricane before the storm reaches its max intensity.

Bertha is a record breaking storm, developing the furthest east in July as a depression, tropical storm, and hurricane. It is also the furthest east developing major hurricane in July. However, as you might be thinking, the strengthening today does not even rival past hurricanes, such as Wilma and Felix. Hopefully Bertha is not a sign of what is to come this season.