Katia is over warm waters and in a low wind shear environment – two ingredients that could propel it to become a major hurricane by the weekend – but it’s too soon to tell if it will ever come near land.
“It’s got a lot of ocean to go. There’s no way at this point to say if it will make any impacts, let alone when it might make them,” said Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist and spokesman at the National Hurricane Center. “There’s a reason we don’t do forecasts more than five days in advance — the information just isn’t good. The error beyond that just isn’t acceptable.” Some models showed Katia veering away from the East Coast. But Feltgen said it’s simply too soon for coastal residents to tell. “Folks along the East Coast shouldn’t be getting a lot of heartburn over this — not yet,” he said.
Katia was still centered about 1,400 miles east of the Leeward Islands and was moving west-northwest at 20 mph with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph. Its current path would take it to waters northeast of Puerto Rico by Sunday, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said. Katia is the 11th named storm of this Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30. The NHC says the average hurricane season usually produces that many in total.