After pounding the Yucatan Peninsula on Sunday night and Monday, Hurricane Emily has reemerged into the Gulf of Mexico and is heading back toward land, expected to hit somewhere between Northwestern Mexico and South Texas early this week.
MSNBC's Chris Jansing spoke with Ed Rappaport, the deputy director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, on Monday to discuss Emily's next move.
Rappaport said thanks to spending about seven hours over land, the storm, which was a category four hurricane over the weekend, has weakened considerably, with maximum winds as of Monday morning at about 100 mph.
"The most significant factor over the last twelve hours has been the interaction with land," he said. "When the center of the hurricane goes over land it looses its source of energy, which are the warm waters.
"It also has to pass over an area where the ground is rough, so the friction tends to interrupt the circulation of the wind at the ground, now once its back out over the waters, it's back in it's environment for potential strengthening, we do think the conditions are favorable for re-strengthening, perhaps back to a category three," he said.
Rappaport, who said he expects Emily's second landfall to occur late Tuesday, said that the warm waters between the Yucatan and Northwest Mexico/South Texas to add fuel to the storm.
"We do think there will be some strengthening once the circulation gets away from land and back over warm waters, the conditions will be favorable for strengthening. ... Then the threats will be the wind, and particularly inland, the rainfall and flooding."
For materials you post or otherwise provide to MSNBC (a "Submission"), you grant MSNBC permission to (1) use, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, modify, translate and reformat your Submission, each in connection with the MSNBC Web Site, and (2) sublicense these rights, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law. MSNBC will not pay you for your Submission. MSNBC may remove your Submission at any time. For each Submission, you represent that you have all rights necessary for you to make the grants in this section.
