Hurricane Delta strengthened slightly Tuesday evening but remains a Category 4 storm, the National Hurricane Center said in its 8 p.m. update. Delta has maximum sustained winds of 145 mph, a 5 mph increase from the 2 p.m. update.
It’s the strongest storm ever named after a letter in the Greek alphabet, eclipsing Hurricane Beta in 2005, which reached 115 mph.
Delta remains on track to strike the northeastern Yucatan Peninsula and then the U.S. Gulf Coast later this week.
Delta, the earliest 25th-named storm ever to form, was located about 180 miles east-southeast from Cozumel, Mexico and traveling at 17 mph, the hurricane center said in its 8 p.m. advisory.
Delta has undergone rapid intensification, which is defined as an increase of maximum sustained winds by at least 35 mph in a 24-hour period. Delta was a tropical storm roughly 36 hours ago.
Delta is the fastest storm to intensify from tropical depression to a Category 4 storm in modern records, said Michael Ventrice, meteorological scientist for The Weather Company.
Delta beat Hurricane Keith (2000) by six hours for most rapid intensification.
Right now the storm is tracking over very deep warm water in the northwest Caribbean, said Accuweather senior meteorologist Dan Kottlowski. The northwest Caribbean has some of the deepest warm water anywhere in the world.
Kottlowski, Accuweather’s lead hurricane expert, said because of that path Delta could intensify further.
Whenever we’ve seen that happen, storms like Delta have intensified dramatically and that’s exactly what’s going on right now, he said. Delta is going to continue to intensify…There’s even a chance it could reach Category 5 hurricane status before it makes landfall over the northeastern portion of the Yucatan peninsula.
The storm-weary Gulf Coast is in the cone of concern for the sixth time in the 2020 hurricane season. Delta is projected to have winds in the 125 mph range when it makes landfall in the U.S. sometime Friday.
Louisiana, Mississippi and a sliver of southeast Texas are in the forecast path. The track shifted away from Florida’s Panhandle on Tuesday night. Delta is bringing life-threatening storm surge, wind and rain. As of Tuesday, no watches or advisories were in effect for the U.S. That will likely change later this week.
Louisiana and Alabama have already declared a state of emergency ahead of the storm.
This has been a busy hurricane season with nine named storms making landfall in the U.S., which ties the record number established in 1916. Beta became the first storm named after a letter of the Greek alphabet to make landfall in the continental U.S. when it came ashore near Port O’Connor, Texas on Sept. 21.
2020, South Florida Sun-Sentinel