Invest 98-L's Spaghetti Models Reveal Storm Nicole's Path Toward Florida

A storm system named Invest 98-L has turned into a subtropical storm called Nicole and is heading toward Florida.

Nicole, which was named at 4 a.m. ET on Monday, was previously called Invest 98-L, which is short for Investigation Area 98-L. The storm is in the western Atlantic Ocean, having traveled from the Caribbean.

While the investigation area's name sounds complicated, the number 98 refers to the basin that the subtropical storm was detected in, while the letter L means that Nicole is in the Atlantic. (Pacific storms are designated with the letter E.)

Storms like Nicole originate when areas of low pressure over the warm tropical ocean cause air to rise, which may result in clusters of thunderstorms. This flow of warm, moist, rapidly rising air will begin to spin because of the Earth's rotation, and, depending on various factors such as sea surface temperatures, humidity and air pressure, it may develop from a tropical depression to a tropical storm. Once wind speeds reach 74 mph, the storm is classified as a hurricane, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Being designated an investigation area means that a storm's path will be forecast by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) using a variety of weather models, including spaghetti models, according to Orlando, Florida, TV station WKMG.

"Spaghetti plots are a way of bringing together all the different forecast models that are run by different forecast centers to predict the path of a hurricane," Liz Stephens, a climate risk and resilience professor at the University of Reading, told Newsweek.

"It is a way of quantifying the uncertainty in the forecast to identify scenarios that are plausible but are not necessarily the most likely, which is critical for planning," she said.

The NOAA and NHC are forecasting that Nicole will move northwards toward Florida and possibly turn into a tropical cyclone, meaning a hurricane.

"Nicole could be at or near hurricane strength when it moves near the northwestern Bahamas and the east coast of Florida Wednesday and Thursday, bringing the potential for a dangerous storm surge, damaging winds, and heavy rainfall to a portion of those areas," says the NHC's forecast discussion.

It may seem late in the year to have a hurricane, but Nicole is not unseasonal, even if it develops into a full tropical cyclone.

"The official hurricane season in the Caribbean runs from June to November, peaking in October," Stephens said. "It is therefore not unusual to see storms forming in the Caribbean at this time of year. In fact, Hurricane Iota hit Nicaragua as a Category 4 hurricane on November 17, 2020."

Climate change could affect the storm season in the U.S., not only by lengthening the period of the year during which storms may form but also by making the storms themselves more powerful.

"Rising sea surface temperatures as a result of climate change are now continuing to provide fuel for hurricanes later into the season, but other conditions need to be favorable to enable these storms to form," Stephens said.

Other extreme weather events are expected to become more frequent and more extreme as the effects of climate change increase, including heat waves, droughts, hailstorms and tornadoes.

Auroop Ganguly, director of the Sustainability and Data Sciences Laboratory at Northeastern University, previously told Newsweek, "On the hydrometeorological hazards side, heat waves are getting—and are further projected to get—even hotter, cold snaps persisting even if growing less frequent, heavy precipitation getting heavier, and so on.

"The impacts can be far-reaching across multiple sectors, such as ecosystems and coastal processes, aspects of the water-energy-food nexus, infrastructures and urban lifelines," Ganguly said.