Hurricane Erin weakens to Category 4 strength; threatens Puerto Rico

by · UPI

Aug. 16 (UPI) -- Hurricane Erin weakened to a Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph while positioned northeast of Puerto Rico on Saturday evening.

The storm is moving westerly at 15 mph and could affect the East Coast early next week, the National Hurricane Center reported at 8 p.m. EDT.

The storm was located about 150 miles northeast of Puerto Rico after passing the Leeward Islands earlier in the day.

The season's first Atlantic hurricane briefly reached Category 5 status Saturday afternoon, the highest on the class, after rapidly intensifying overnight into early Saturday morning.

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In an update late Saturday morning, the NHC reported an Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft showed maximum sustained winds of 160 mph, which passed the 157 mph minimum for Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

In the NHC's 5 p.m. update, Erin remained a Category 5 storm with 160 mph after rapidly intensifying from a 75 mph Category 1 storm on Friday morning to a 155 mph Category 4 storm on Saturday morning.

There is a tropical storm watch for St. Martin and St. Barthelemy, Sint Maarten and Turks and Caicos Islands.

The Bahamas' government issued a tropical storm watch as hurricane-force winds extend up to 30 miles from the center, and tropical-force winds extend up to 160 miles.

The storm is expected to skirt Puerto Rico on Sunday rather than hit it directly, which could bring strong winds and up to 6 inches of rain throughout Saturday.

"Locally considerable flash and urban flooding, along with landslides or mudslides, are possible," NHC said, in addition to the possibility of swells.

"Swells generated by Erin will affect portions of the northern Leeward Islands, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and the Turks and Caicos Islands through the weekend," the weather service said in its latest update.

"These swells will spread to the Bahamas, Bermuda, and the East Coast of the United States early next week," the NHC added.

"These rough ocean conditions will likely cause life-threatening surf and rip currents."

Forecasters are predicting the storm will make a west-northwest turn Saturday evening, which will come with a "decrease in forward speed," ahead of an expected northerly early next week.

By Wednesday night, the storm was forecast to be a few hundred miles west of Bermuda and just outside the big tracking cone.

Erin then is forecast to travel north hundreds of miles from the East Coast.

"Although Erin is a somewhat compact hurricane now, the models are in strong agreement that the system will grow in size over the next several days," NHC forecaster Jack Beven said in a discussion.

By the middle of next week, he said Erin is forecast to at least double or triple in size, which would cause rough ocean conditions over the western Atlantic.

"Erin is expected to produce life-threatening surf and rip currents along the beaches of the Bahamas, much of the East Coast of the U.S., and Atlantic Canada next week," Beven said.

Erin became the first hurricane of the 2025 Atlantic storm season on Friday. Forecasters expected the storm to intensify into a hurricane since early in the week.

There have been four prior Atlantic named storms so far this season. Tropical Storm Chantal caused major flooding in North Carolina but was the only of the four to make landfall in the United States.

The Atlantic hurricane season began on June 1 and ends on Nov. 30. The peak hurricane season goes from mid-August through September and into mid-October.

Ninety-three percent of hurricane landfalls along the U.S. Gulf Coast and the East Coast have occurred from August through October, the Weather Channel reported in citing data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Last year at this time, there also had been five named storms.