As of Monday evening, Idalia is still a tropical storm near Cuba. But meteorologists say that it will be a major hurricane by the time it hits Florida on Wednesday morning. How are they so sure of that? AccuWeather's Bernie Rayno explains.
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00:00 We're continuing to track Edalia's every move tonight as people up and down
00:04 Florida's Gulf Coast get ready. Bernie Rayno explains exactly why AccuWeather
00:09 forecasters are certain the storm will rapidly intensify into a major hurricane.
00:16 In our weather-wise segment tonight where we break down something
00:21 complicated in the meteorological field and we make it easy for you to
00:24 understand, we're going to explain to you why we are so confident that Edalia is
00:29 going to become a major hurricane and strengthen over the next 24 hours.
00:33 Now, throughout the day and even into the part of this afternoon, Edalia has been
00:37 impacted by what? Wind shear. Here's where we have all the moisture with Edalia
00:42 but we have this upper low south of Louisiana. What's that doing? On the
00:46 southern side it produces winds out of the northwest and that is the wind shear.
00:51 That's why all of the moisture has been on the southern side of the center of
00:55 circulation but I want you to see what happens here as we go forward here.
00:59 This upper low is going to be leaving as we go through tonight and especially in
01:05 the Tuesday. Here's all the energy and you can see all the energy here with our
01:09 key in the left-hand corner. This is all the energy with Edalia but no more
01:13 northwesterly flow. Instead, winds are going to be light in the Gulf of Mexico
01:18 or out of the south, relatively light beginning Tuesday, Tuesday afternoon,
01:25 Tuesday evening, right before landfall sometime Wednesday morning. So think
01:29 about that. Here's all the energy with Edalia with lessening wind shear and
01:34 look at our water temperatures. It's like bath water in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.
01:38 Water temperature is 86 to 88 degrees. So you have the moisture, you have the light
01:42 wind shear, and you have the warm water. That's why we're calling for the rapid
01:47 intensification and this will be a major hurricane before it makes landfall
01:52 on Wednesday. And now you know.