'Wild to see': CNN anchor astonished by hurricane forecast
A pair of hurricanes are churning up dangerous rip currents and huge waves along the Atlantic coast and battering Bermuda with a powerful one-two punch.
Hurricanes Imelda and Humberto are spinning in the western Atlantic Ocean this week after collapsing five unoccupied houses along North Carolina’s Outer Banks, and CNN's Derek Van Dam told viewers what to expect from the powerful storms.
"It's amazing that this was the straw that broke the camel's back," Van Dam said, as video footage showed the collapsed beachfront homes. "Remember, we've had several powerful offshore storms this hurricane season. Hurricane Erin a couple of weeks ago, an unnamed coastal storm. They are really eroding our coastal defenses, so we are watching in real time this slow-motion climate disaster that continues to threaten the same areas as these large, powerful storm systems work their way offshore, and that is the situation we have right now.
"Believe it or not, it was Humberto waves, long-period swells, and that consistent northeasterly wind that set up behind these two hurricanes that battered the Outer Banks and threatened once again those coastal communities and those coastal homes, inevitably allowing them to fall back into the ocean. Remember a couple of years ago, a couple decades ago, they had prime beachfront, real estate, right?"
"All right, so look at what's happening with Imelda, and that still, that northeasterly flow battering the same regions, the Chesapeake Bay," Van Dam continued. "Look out, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, the Outer Banks, 40- to 50-mile-per-hour wind gusts today from the northeast, continuing over the next 36 hours. You add on top of that high tide that's a little bit higher than what we've experienced the past couple of days, so we're going to combine all these with these long-period swells developing from both Humberto and Imelda, and that means we have the potential for coastal erosion in the same locations.
"Hopefully we don't get any more of this, because what a mess. Look how difficult that is to clean up. We're so thankful that no one was inside and no one was hurt, but look at the rip current risk all along that 2,000 miles of coastal real estate on the East Coast, and guess what? The threat is not done in terms of a landfalling hurricane."
"Imelda has got its eyes set on Bermuda tonight," the weather anchor added. "That's go time, overnight tonight, we could be in the eye of yet another hurricane in Bermuda. That island taking yet another beating. What a thing. Look at the satellite, Kate. Some eye candy to leave you with."
CNN's Kate Bolduan was astonished by the satellite images showing the two hurricanes massing over the ocean, "wrapping around each other," as Van Dam described them.
"It is wild to see those two huge storms churning so closely together," she said. "It is wild, wild to see."