Meteorologists first began watching the area of instability that eventually formed Hurricane Erin several days before the storm was named Monday of this past week.
The system remained a tropical storm as it traveled westward across the Atlantic, weakening slightly mid-week as it battled cooler waters.
Thanks to warmer waters in the western Atlantic, Erin began a period of explosive rapid intensification starting on Friday, going from a tropical storm to Category 5 in just under 30 hours, and from a Category 3 to a Category 5 in just under 6 hours.
Erin has also joined a rare group of only five hurricanes that have wind speeds of at least 145 mph by August 16 since 1970, according to Dr. Phil Klotzbach. Erin is the first Category 5 hurricane since Milton and Beryl in 2024.
Erin began to undergo an eyewall replacement cycle on Saturday, setting off a period of fluctuation in intensity and bringing the storm back to Category 4 intensity by Saturday evening.
While Erin has been skirting around islands in the Caribbean, a wind gust of 57 mph was recorded on the island Tortola in the British Virgin Islands Saturday evening, but sustained tropical storm force winds have remained to the north of the islands so far.
Erin dumped up to 6 inches of rain in Puerto Rico and up to 7 inches of rain in the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to the National Weather Service.
Winds gusted to 53 mph in the Turks and Caicos, as Erin passed near the group of islands southeast of the Bahamas earlier this week, according to the National Hurricane Center.
A NOAA buoy about 170 miles east of Hatteras near the center reported winds gusting to 85 mph and up to 45 foot waves early Thursday morning.
Wind gusts as high as 53 mph have been clocked in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and gusts of at least 40 mph have been measured from the Virginia Tidewater to coastal Delaware and the Jersey shore.
Another round of coastal flooding affected the Outer Banks Thursday morning, with significant overwash of Highway 12 and also on the sound side of Ocracoke Island. A tide monitoring station in Duck, North Carolina, also reached major flood stage Thursday night.
Winds gusted from 50 to 60 mph in Bermuda early Friday. Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, clocked a peak gust of 47 mph just after midnight.
(MORE: How Erin’s Size Compared To Other Giant Hurricanes)
Jennifer Gray is a weather and climate writer for weather.com. She has been covering some of the world’s biggest weather and climate stories for the last two decades.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.
