THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 1, 1995 TAG: 9509010484
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
Call it Son of Jerry. Or Jerry Junior.
Either way, a week after Tropical Depression Jerry went ashore in Florida's panhandle and lost its tropical characteristics over Georgia and the Carolinas, a piece of the storm has turned full circle and is showing signs of redeveloping in the Gulf of Mexico.
Jerry may just be a sideshow, however, compared with what is happening in two other rings of the tropical circus that is the Atlantic Ocean this year.
A pair of storms - Hurricane Iris and Tropical Storm Karen - are expected to move northward on parallel courses, ending up hundreds of miles due east of - but safely away from - Hampton Roads by Sunday afternoon. That's assuming one storm doesn't swallow the other first.
Both storms were in the Mid-Atlantic on Thursday, Iris about 600 miles southeast of Bermuda and Karen about 1,100 miles southeast of the island.
Meanwhile, a rapidly growing Hurricane Luis was moving west-northwest and could become a threat to the United States next week.
Only one storm - Hurricane Humberto - seems to be out of the picture. By 5 p.m. Thursday, it was about 480 miles west-northwest of the Azores, moving north and rapidly losing its tropical character.
Otherwise, there's no sign of the hurricane season slacking off.
The strongest storm by far Thursday was Luis, about 1,300 miles east of the Leeward Islands and chugging steadily west-northwest at 14 mph.
Luis doubled in strength in 24 hours, going from maximum sustained winds of 50 mph on Wednesday to 105 mph with gusts to 120 mph at 5 p.m. Thursday.
It appears Luis will continue to move on a west-northwest course, hitting sustained winds of 115 mph on Sunday.
That would qualify it as an intense hurricane (winds over 110 mph) and make it the second such storm this season. Felix briefly attained winds of 135 mph.
William Gray, a leading expert on hurricane forecasting, had predicted this season would yield 16 named storms, of which nine would become hurricanes and three would develop into intense hurricanes.
With the heart of the hurricane season just beginning, there already have been 12 named storms, six hurricanes and one intense hurricane.
``Luis is becoming a powerful hurricane,'' said John Hope, the leading hurricane specialist at The Weather Channel in Atlanta. ``He may be a candidate for one of Dr. Gray's major hurricanes. . . . It is a very well-developed hurricane.''
Hope is less certain about the possible rebirth of Jerry.
After crossing briefly into the Gulf of Mexico last week as a tropical depression, the storm went into Georgia and the Carolinas and emerged in the Atlantic, where it split.
One section went northeast. The other sank southward and crossed back over Florida on Wednesday, dumping heavy rains in the same places it had been a week earlier.
Jerry's return sent water from rivers and creeks over their banks and onto already saturated low-lying areas, flooding hundreds of homes.
With the storm back over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, ``we believe it has some potential for further development,'' Hope said Thursday, ``but it has a long way to go.'' He suspects the storm will simply ``hang around out there in the eastern Gulf for a day or two.''
Reports from ships and buoys showed a counterclockwise wind pattern around the storm system Thursday, and satellite images and radar pictures ``show a suggestion of circulation in there,'' Hope said.
Officially, however, the National Hurricane Center was only watching the system. For now. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Francisco Orellana of Madrid, Spain, struggles to cover up his son,
Juan, 2, during rainy weather caused by Tropical Storm Jerry. They
were visiting Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla.
by CNB