How Hurricane Erin marked history without even giving land

The first Hurricane of the Atlantic in 2025 has not lost time to make history. Hurricane Erin will remain in memories as one of the fastest Atlantic hurricanes ever recorded, with perhaps the fastest intensification rate for any storm before September 1, CNN reports.

At 11 a.m., on Friday, August 15, Erin was a category 1 hurricane, according to National Hurricane Center. Over the next 24 hours, this storm was considerably strengthened. At 11 a.m. HE on Saturday, the NHC told Erin a “catastrophic” hurricane in category 5. Since then, Erin has weakened in a category 4 storm, but the extremely rapid intensification it has suffered during the weekend indicates a disturbing phenomenon largely trained by the increase in global temperatures.

If a large part of this seems familiar, you may remember Hurglass Helene and Milton. Struck in the fall of 2024, these two storms quickly intensified before slamming on the east coast of the United States. Rapid intensification occurs when the maximum sustained wind speed of a tropical cyclone increases by at least 35 miles per hour (56 kilometers per hour) in a period of 24 hours, according to the NHC.

Like Helene and Milton, Erin quickly intensified on higher sea surface temperatures than the average. The forecasters predicted that this would happen as the storm moved to the Caribbean, but Erin exceeded their expectations, reinforcing in a category 5 storm almost overnight. This may be due largely to the fact that the Atlantic basin experiences a marine heat wave. Heat adds energy to tropical cyclones, starting them for rapid intensification.

Category 5 hurricanes are relatively rare in the Atlantic basin. Erin is one of the 43 recorded, according to CNN. That said, about a quarter of these storms have occurred since 2016 – a statistic that highlights the effects of climate change in the hurricanes season.

Multiple studies show that rapid intensification becomes more frequent and severe as sea surface temperatures increase. At the same time, global global warming exacerbates another important factor in strengthening storms: atmospheric humidity. As such, the conditions that explode a strength cyclone in a short window have become the pillars of the hurricanes season.

Since 1979, human -based warming has increased the overall probability of a tropical cyclone becoming a major hurricane of around 5% per decade, according to a recent study. Between 1980 and 2023, 22% of Atlantic tropical cyclones experienced extreme rapid intensification like Erin, according to Central Climate.

As we saw with Helene and Milton, rapid intensification makes hurricane much more dangerous by reducing the time that communities must prepare or evacuate. These two storms have devastated their impact zones, causing billions of dollars in damages. Fortunately, the forecasters expect Erin to remain offshore before ending up at sea, but that does not mean that it will have no impact.

Although he has not touched earth, Erin has already brought heavy rains, strong winds and generalized power outages to Puerto Rico, reports The Guardian. On Monday, August 18, the NHC warned against deadly rip currents and storm waves along the beaches of the Bahamas and the east coast of the United States. A large part of this category 4 storm remains to be seen, but it is clear that climate change leads to a new type of threat in the Atlantic basin.