Instant Tropical Storm Bertha challenges records

From zero to 60 in an hour.

That’s a weather metaphor of course, but Tropical Storm Bertha’s rapid development on Wednesday caught the eye of forecasters and challenged some records.

The storm rapidly intensified from an area of investigation (Invest 91L) to tropical storm status in less time than it takes to watch your favorite weather movie.

Watch how two intense super cell towers within the storm flare, then merge in the circulation and quickly organize into a tropical cyclone just off the South Carolina coast.

Near-record intensity burst

The rapid intensity burst off the Carolina coast today challenged the record for the fastest storm to landfall.

Weather Underground’s Bob Henson has a good explanation in his piece on Bertha Wednesday. Here’s a clip.

Bertha was upgraded by the NOAA/NWS National Hurricane Center directly from invest to named-storm status at 8:30 am EDT Wednesday, and it made landfall around 9:30 am EDT near Mount Pleasant, NC, just northeast of Charleston. Maximum sustained winds were estimated to be 50 mph at landfall and were kept at that range with the 11 am EDT advisory, when Bertha’s small center was located about 15 miles inland, just west of Georgetown.

The time span of just one hour between Bertha's designation by NHC as a tropical cyclone and its landfall is one of the shortest on record. Just last year, Tropical Depression 11 formed near the Texas coast 45 minutes before it was upgraded to Tropical Storm Imelda and 90 minutes before it made landfall near Freeport.

Another early start

Bertha is the second named tropical cyclone to form this year. That’s almost two months ahead of the average date for the arrival of the season’s second Atlantic tropical cyclone.

This marks the fifth season with two named storms before the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season.