Maria Buzz Saws Through Puerto Rico

…MARIA MAKES LANDFALL NEAR YABUCOA PUERTO RICO…

Geostationary satellite images and surface observations indicate
that the center of Hurricane Maria made landfall near Yabucoa,
Puerto Rico, around 615 AM AST.

The eye of Hurricane Maria is passing over San Juan and will continue to saw tooth its way across the Island. Maria made landfall during an eye wall replacement cycle and that plus the interaction with Puerto weakened it slightly from a category 5 to a strong category 4 hurricane. Maria becomes the 3rd Category 4 hurricane to make landfall in the United States this season.

SATELLITE LOOP

The eye has now filled with clouds but the core of the hurricane remains in tact and the center of Maria will be moving back out over the open waters of the Atlantic later today. The radar image below was the last image from the San Juan radar before it went out this morning.

The hurricane model tracks bring the center close to the north shore of the Dominican Republic but it should clear the coastline. The its a northwest course near Turks & Caicos.

Weather models overnight leave a rather uncertain course up the east coast next week with Hurricane Maria. It would seem that a track similar to Jose is possible however there are subtleties that could take Maria closer to the coast. Joestradamus discussed this in his long range post yesterday and it is worth the read if you missed it. We will evaluate weather models regarding Maria and post about this later today.

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