In New England and Canada, Tens of thousands continued without power on Sunday morning subsequent to the deadly storm Lee struck Nova Scotia on Saturday evening as a post-tropical storm.
In Nova Scotia, approximately 100,000 individuals were without power, PowerOutage.com informed. The US state of Maine was faced with about 40,000 outages as of Sunday morning, and New Brunswick had around 12,000, the website also stated.
Lee which instigated at least one death, concerning a man whose car was caught under a falling tree – lingers to pack strong constant winds of 45mph (72km/h) in certain areas of Canada’s Atlantic shoreline, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) informed. Authorities cautioned that road conditions continued dangerous in some regions, including threats such as felling trees and power lines, the CBC said.
As Lee inched north-east at 22mph (35km/h), moving away from Canada’s Maritime provinces, meteorologists are keeping a close eye on other storms in the Atlantic, including Tropical Hurricane Nigel. This hurricane is building up to reach “major hurricane status”, sense category 3 or higher with winds exceeding 111mph (179km/h), Accuweather.com indicated.
Authorities said there is a “high risk” that Nigel will still toughen as it passes across the central Atlantic, over water that hadn’t been disturbed and cooled by Lee.
Bill Deger, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather said the factors contributing the possible for strengthening as the system transfers along are very high ocean water temperatures and slow winds higher up in the atmosphere, recognized as wind shear to meteorologists.
AccuWeather senior meteorologist Adam Douty explained saying that current forecasts put Nigel touching north and then north-east, likely avoiding it from directly impacting Bermuda, however, the storm could carry rough surf and rip tides to Bermuda as it passes by, to the east of the islands by the middle of the week.
The odds of Nigel rolling toward the US has “reduced significantly” this weekend, however. Tropical Storm Margot, which was reduced from hurricane status, “may not prevail much longer, the NHC informed.
Lee, which at one stage had touched the top force classification for hurricanes, category 5, bashed the US Virgin Islands, Bermuda and the Bahamas before it started directing north.
Devastating hurricanes remain rare this far north. One prominent exception was the great New England storm in 1938, which presented winds attaining 186mph (300km/h), with continued gusts of 121mph (195km/h), at Massachusetts’ Blue Hill observatory. Weather specialists have called the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season unmatched. Unusually warm sea surface temperatures this summer – encouraged by the worldwide climate crisis – have established rich refinement grounds for tropical storms and hurricanes.
