Helene is expected to strengthen into a hurricane before making landfall in Florida on Sept. 26. AccuWeather's Jon Porter says the storm will continue to intensify rapidly into a Category 3 storm.
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00:00A picture is worth a thousand words here. Let's take a look at Helene this morning and just
00:06remember what it looked like yesterday. It is a just a very impressive looking tropical storm on
00:13its way to a hurricane. Yeah Bernie what a day, what a difference a day makes. It's an intensifying
00:19tropical storm, maximum sustained winds of 70 miles per hour on the doorstep of becoming a
00:24hurricane and it's just starting its journey here in terms of intensification and see how
00:30close it is to the Yucatan Peninsula. When a storm gets that close that can actually,
00:34that interaction with land can also help tighten up the circulation and that may be in fact what
00:39ends up getting it started on this rapid intensification. I want to show you the radar
00:43from the Cuban Meteorological Service and we can see the center of circulation now within the
00:49Yucatan channel here. Again if we can go to that radar you can clearly see that we have the bands
00:55of showers and thunderstorms again wrapping in around the storm center. Can we go to that radar,
01:01is that available to us? The radar from the Cuban, there it is. Okay John what I see is certainly a
01:08very well, looks like maintained center of circulation and look at the banding along the
01:13eastern side of the eye. Yes those are, these are all signs that's a great radar presentation from
01:19the Meteorological Service of Cuba there and you can see those bands of rain organizing,
01:26again a sign of an intensifying storm. All right water vapor loop, remember it was 48 hours ago
01:32John, you and I were looking at the Gulf of Mexico and saying well tell you what, if this doesn't
01:39rapidly intensify it's because of all of the dry air but we had the concern that that dry
01:44air in the Gulf of Mexico would be leaving and it certainly has as we see an increase of moisture
01:51on the northern side of Jalene. That's exactly right, the storm continues to drive that
01:56increased moisture to the north and so this this graphic has been the first one that I've
02:02looked at when I've been analyzing the storm every day this week and the increase in moisture
02:07indicated in those whites and green colors driving well north of the storm. It's been
02:14very a marked increase and again that shows us that we don't think dry air is going to be concerned
02:19at all. Now the wind shear is limited John, I would not say that it is the pristine or a perfect setup
02:28for rapid development, it is lessening but here is what our concern is and it's been our concern
02:34this entire hurricane season that while maybe the moisture and maybe the wind shear aren't the
02:42perfect setup, the water temperatures certainly are the perfect setup for rapid intensification.
02:48You could see the water temperatures in the middle 80s John but it's more than that, it's how deep
02:55that warm water is in the northwest Caribbean in the Gulf of Mexico, it's called the ocean heat
03:00content. Yes and we look at that ocean heat content in fact in those in that graphic you can
03:06see Helene is going to be passing right over a current loop and what that is in the Gulf of
03:10Mexico is that's an area of that high ocean heat content indicated in the yellows oranges and reds
03:17that's some of the deepest and warmest water in the Gulf of Mexico. It's going to be like rocket
03:23fuel that's why this storm is going to intensify to a category three hurricane and may do so even
03:29beyond that as you mentioned earlier Bernie. John I'm going to share a conversation that you and I
03:34had off camera because just to let the viewers know we have a very bad feeling about this.
03:41I've seen this before in Ian, I've seen it in Michael that yes the wind shear is not perfect
03:48for development but the fact that it's parallel or at the back of Helene makes us consider
03:57changing this to at least a category four at some point tomorrow and tomorrow night before
04:02landfall. It can certainly get there if it's able to fully take advantage of this environment that
04:08we're talking about. It's going to have to develop an inner core and if it does that this storm can
04:12become even more intense. We want to show you an AccuWeather exclusive here. This is our landfall
04:19forecast and we're showing you as we continue to zone in on where we think landfall is going to be
04:25this decision was made this morning as far west as Mexico Beach and as far east as Horseshoe Beach
04:32and Steenhatchee which got certainly inundated from Debbie just about a month ago so that is
04:39our landfall forecast. Note the maximum staying was at landfall 120 to 125 miles per hour.
04:47A big storm for sure and also very important to point out this is going to be a large storm too
04:53so the dangerous life-threatening impacts from storm surge from flooding rainfall and from the
04:59damaging winds are going to spread out hundreds of miles from this storm so it's not only just
05:03where it makes landfall but they're going to be very dangerous life-threatening impacts well inland.