Hello and welcome to another edition of The Daily Bolt with your host, Dr. Jeff Silly. Today's topic, Dorian becomes a record breaker. Sit back and relax and enjoy today's podcast.
So Dorian, as of about 9.40 in the morning, Pacific Time, 12.40 in the afternoon, Eastern Time has made landfall at El Bokey in the Obaco Simon Group, which is in the northwestern Bahamas. Dorian has made a record by its wind speed. It's now a moderately strong category 5 hurricane. So when I say moderately strong category 5, that might seem like an oxymoron, but it's not the strongest category 5 hurricane that's ever been recorded in the Atlantic Basin, but it is the strongest hurricane that's been recorded making landfall and impacting the northwestern Bahamas.
And there have not been very many other hurricanes that have reached this intensity in recent years. So it is noteworthy for that alone, and it is a record in terms of the Bahamas Island Group in particular. So winds have increased in terms of steady winds recorded based on an air force hurricane hunter aircraft observation, 285 miles per hour, with gusts up over 220 miles per hour. So we're getting up into the range of tornadic velocities in some of these cases, and perhaps some of these gusts have occurred within small tornadoes that are within the eyewall structure, which does happen from time to time.
So this is not a hurricane to be messed with, and certainly it's a hurricane for everyone on the southeastern coast of the US to continue to keep an eye on, as well as the remaining islands in the Bahamas Group that the hurricane is headed towards. In particular, it is headed towards Grand Bahama Island and several other islands in the northwestern Bahamas before it ever gets within striking distance of Florida. Its speed has not changed appreciably overnight. It is moving westward at about eight miles an hour, it's slowed down a little bit overnight and has picked up a little bit of speed today.
As it goes over the Obakos and the remaining Bahama Island Group, we do expect the intensity to drop a bit, but it has already continued to strengthen more than anticipated in last night's forecasts, not just creeping over the category 5 threshold, but moving into being a solid category 5 storm. And this is probably due to two different factors, both of which I mentioned in yesterday's podcast. First of all, the ocean water temperatures are quite warm, and how warm is quite warm, do you ask? Well, water temperature is being observed by buoys in the Bahamas and just off the east coast of Florida are very much in the 85 to 86 degree Fahrenheit temperature range.
They don't get that much warmer than that, at least in terms of what we know historically from observations. And that brings into question, okay, are these warmer ocean temperatures a result of global warming? And the answer is perhaps, there can be many other things going on that can be contributing to the very warm ocean temperatures at the moment in this particular part of the Atlantic Basin. Most notably, the fact that there have not been any significant tropical storms in this part of the Atlantic yet this season.
Dorian is the first, the waters have had all summer to warm. That's not unheard of, but it is a bit unusual that there has been very little in the way of significant Atlantic tropical activity in this part of the basin yet this year. That allows the ocean temperatures to warm because the circulation of a hurricane not only moves the air, it moves the water, and it tends to bring up cooler waters farther down beneath the surface of the ocean. Without that forcing mechanism, the ocean water temperatures at the surface have been able to just continue heating throughout the summer, and this makes them in a very warm state.
Second, is the fact that there's very little air motion aloft compared to what might normally be the case at this point in the year. There's a strong ridge of high pressure aloft. That's why there's very little steering currents over Dorian right now, and it's mostly going on its own momentum to the west, and it's not going at a particularly fast speed. It is going just fast enough, however, that its own churning up of the ocean surface hasn't cooled the water and act as a break on development.
So we have all these factors coming into play making Dorian a very strong hurricane. Storm search, just to give you an idea of just how much water Dorian is moving, is expected to be 18 to 23 feet above normal tide levels with higher destructive waves. Now you might wonder, okay, 18 to 23 feet, the Bahamas are not a particularly high elevation island chain. And just what is the elevation of, say, the Abakos?
Well, it is certainly one of the island groups in the Bahamas with some higher elevation, because unlike some of the other islands which are mostly sandy groups, the Abakos are effectively made of limestone. And the elevation, the highest elevation, is on the eastern side, particularly of Grand Abakos Island, where it gets up to as much as 75 feet. So an 18 to 23 foot storm surge won't inundate the entirety of Grand Abakos Island, nor Grand Bahama Island, which has a maximum elevation of around 40 feet. But there will be substantial flooding, there will be some areas that are completely submerged.
There are more areas on the east, the west center part, sorry, of Grand Abakos Island that are less than 15 feet in elevation, and those will most certainly be submerged. But the entire island will not be. It's interesting also, the fact that the, almost the entire length of Grand Abakos Island is protected by a large natural coral reef. That coral reef probably will undergo some damage as well from the hurricane.
It's unlikely that with these winds, with this amount of wave action storm surge, that that coral reef is going to stay as intact as it is right now. That's another interesting ecological impact that hurricanes have that you don't hear about very often. Nonetheless, it's very likely that the northwestern Bahamas will probably get more damage than had been anticipated when preparations were made for Dorian, because at that point Dorian was a Category 3, most people did not expect an intensification to this level of strength in terms of Category 5. We will have to keep monitoring Dorian to see what happens during the day, though as I said, I would expect a little bit of a weakening, perhaps back into Category 4 stage as it goes over the Abakos and potentially Grand Bahama Island.
So we'll keep you posted on Dorian, there will be another podcast tomorrow morning that updates you on where Dorian is and the amount of damage that it's done today. For now, this is the David Bolt with Dr. Jeff Tilly. Have a good rest of your Labor Day weekend 2019.