Humberto, Imelda Find Love After All In A New World Of Category 5 Hurricanes

Weakening Hurricane Humberto, right, and strengthening
Hurricane Imelda, of the Southeast U.S. coast in this
mornings satellite photo. High clouds extending all
the way to New England are the warm "exhaust" 
from the storms. The two hurricanes will 
head east out to sea. 

Hurricanes Humberto and Imelda continue to foster their close relationship in the southwest Atlantic Ocean, now pretty far offshore of the United States.  

I painted the two very close to each other tropical systems as a sort of tumultuous couple in my Saturday post. One of many guesses were that Humberto would accelerate away leaving a jilted Imelda to wander near the U.S. coastline. 

But, instead, they worked things out. Humberto is tugging Imelda along for a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean.

That comes as a big relief of the United States, because it means no landfall, no big flood, no disaster . Instead, the Southeast is just seeing relatively minor coastal effects like rain, gusty, non-damaging winds and some rough surf and rip currents. 

It turns out Humberto and Imelda were made for each other.

They are incredibly close together by tropical storm standards, with only 580 miles separating them as of yesterday. In the past only nine pairs of tropical storms or hurricanes have come as close or closer to each other as Humberto and Imelda, according to meteorologist Michael Lowry. 

Imelda is now swept up in the atmospheric steering currents created by Humberto and both are heading northeastward together out into the open Atlantic. Both will eventually die in the cold waters out there. 

Before that could happen, Imelda strengthened into a hurricane this morning with top winds of 75 mph. It could achieve winds of 100 mph within a day or two. Imelda is expected to pass near Bermuda Wednesday night or Thursday morning, so they could receive quite a blow.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Humberto is to the northeast of Imelda and tugging her along. Humberto was briefly a Category 5 storm with winds of 160 mph. But as of this morning, it was down to 100 mph. Hurricanes are like big chimneys.

Warm air is pushed upward into the upper atmosphere.  The "exhaust" from the Imelda's chimney is helping to suppress Humberto's strength.  Also, strong upper level winds caused in part by the atmospheric chaos created by two big storms is also weakening Humberto by stripping its intense thunderstorms away from its center. 

You could see the "exhaust" from Imelda on satellite photos yesterday and this morning.  

And overhead here in Vermont. That warm air belching from hurricanes often takes the form of high thin cirrus clouds. Those thin clouds that went south to north over Vermont yesterday afternoon and evening, and produced another nice sunset, was part of the exhaust plume from Imelda. 

That Humberto reached Category 5 status before its tango with Imelda is disconcerting, since these Category 5 monsters are becoming more frequent in the Atlantic Ocean. Category 5 hurricanes are the worst of the worst, with top wind speeds of at least 156 mph. 

Humberto was the 12th Atlantic Category 5 hurricane in the last decade, and the fourth in the past two years. Beryl and Milton were Category 5s last year, and this year we had Erin and Humberto. Unlike last year's Category 5s, neither storm bothered the United States all that much.  

Hurricane season is not over, and there could be a couple or few more tropical storms or hurricanes between now and the end of November. However, the National Hurricane Center says they don't expect any new tropical storms to form over the next week or so.