Category 3 Hurricane Danny Projected Path Update

Categories: NOAA

Category 3 Hurricane Danny Projected Path Update

MIAMI, Florida — As of 5 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Friday, August 21, 2015, NOAA’s National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida has issued a public advisory due to the presence of Hurricane Danny which continues to gain strength and is now a Category 3 Hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

LATEST HURRICANE DANNY SATELLITE IMAGES

Hurricane Danny is located 860 miles east of the Leeward Islands and is moving to the west-northwest at 10 miles per hour. Danny now has maximum sustained winds of 115 miles per hour, with higher gusts.

According to the National Hurricane Center, Danny’s projected path is forecast to continue in a west-northwesterly direction through Friday, and then take a more westerly storm track on Saturday or Saturday night. Danny is expected to continue to weaken over the next 48 hours and become a tropical storm by Monday.

Data from a U.S. Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft indicates that Danny remains a tiny tropical cyclone. Hurricane-force winds only extend outward up to 15 miles (30 km) from the center and tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 70 miles (110 km). NHC forecasters note that small hurricanes tend to have higher fluctuations in strength. Another Hurricane Hunter flight is scheduled for Saturday.

Spaghetti models are in general agreement that Hurricane Danny will continue on a west-northwesterly track towards the northern Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic coastlines through Tuesday. Most models forecast that Danny will pass over the southern Bahamas by next Friday.

The spaghetti plots for Hurricane Danny have shifted more to the north each day during the last three days. If Hurricane Danny’s projected path continues more to the north, and the tropical cyclone actually misses the interaction with land masses in the eastern Caribbean, that could suddenly change both future storm track predictions and intensity models.