Trying to anticipate where Hurricane Lee is going and how strong it will be when it makes landfall has turned into a frustrating pastime for Mainers. It is the same for trained meteorologists.
In recent days, the predicted track has drifted west to point more at Down East Maine. By late Thursday, it moved back to the east to point more at southwest Nova Scotia.
But that variability is in many ways beside the point, forecasters say. Whether it makes landfall in Maine or across the border in Canada, Lee’s winds and rains are expected to have an impact on much of Maine.
“A hurricane path is not like a tornado path,” forecaster Mike Haggett of Pine Tree Weather said. “This is going to be a big one, and it is shaping up to bring big problems to the interior and the coastline.”
Forecast tracks are not guaranteed. Weather modeling has greatly improved in recent decades, but there are multiple types of models that meteorologists use. With every storm, some models end up being more accurate than others. Living 60 miles away from where the center of a storm is predicted to be doesn’t mean it won’t pass directly over your home.
Just because Lee is getting weaker as it moves north does not mean it won’t be dangerous. The sustained winds of Lee have slowed down a lot since late last week, but they still could be at hurricane strength by the time they get here.
Even if the storm’s sustained wind speeds drop below 74 mph, the minimum sustained wind speed for a hurricane, Lee most likely would still be a powerful tropical storm. Sustained tropical storm-force winds of around 60 to 70 mph, coupled with occasional hurricane-force gusts, can cause substantial damage to or destroy mobile homes, the National Weather Service says.
That leads to the various, changing watches and warnings that the National Weather Service has issued for Maine.
As of 5 p.m. Thursday, the Down East Maine coast between Stonington and the Canadian border was under both a hurricane watch and a tropical storm warning. While that seems to be in conflict, it simply reflects lingering uncertainty about the path the center of the storm will follow.
The difference between a “watch” and a “warning” is a small one. A watch, for either a tropical storm or a hurricane, is when there is a possibility of such storm conditions in the next 48 hours, according to the weather service. A warning is issued when such storm conditions are expected — more than just possible — within the next 36 hours.
Forecasters now expect sustained tropical storm-force winds for coastal Maine and inland eastern Maine, but they have not ruled out the chance that the storm could make landfall in Maine instead of Nova Scotia, Mal Walker, lead meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Caribou, said. If that happens, the route it takes could result in hurricane-strength winds of 74 mph or more directly pounding Maine’s coast, he said.
“There is some possibility the storm could track a little further west,” Walker said.
Regardless of which side of the hurricane-tropical storm dividing line that the storm’s winds fall on, there’s another aspect that could result in widespread effects.
As the storm moves north, even if the winds flying counter-clockwise around the eye of the storm might slow down, the storm is expected to spread out over a larger area. This means that even if the storm’s winds weaken to a degree, they could affect people relatively further away from the storm’s center.
In other words, if the storm center looks like it is angling away from where you are, it still might be expanding. That means you still could be affected by heavy rains and high winds.
“This is going to be a dangerous storm,” Haggett said. “The scientific semantics don’t matter.”
