Model Madness with Multiple Tropical Threats Over Next 2 Weeks
After finally being done with the daily deluge on Hurricane Dorian, which lasted from August 28th to September 6th, looks like we’ll be talking about another tropical system in the coming days as we reach the height of the hurricane season. I’ll keep this post relatively short, but lurking is a tropical witches brew disturbance located approximately 200 miles ESE of Great Abaco Island. It continues to slowly get organized and is expected to strengthen to a depression and possibly up to tropical storm Humberto later this weekend. Tropical storm warnings are up for northwestern Bahamas, unfortunately, which could receive 2-4″ and up to 6″ of rain. Tropical storm watches are up for Jupiter Inlet to Flagler-Volusia County line in Florida. At this point, the latest European ensembles keeps this off the Florida coast, yet may still bring tropical storm force winds and heavy rain along the coast. Depending on all the atmospheric gears, this feature may ride up and off the GA/SC/SC coast early next week. But what we need to carefully watch is how it interacts with a strong blocking Ridge in the northeast. While early, there’s a risk it meanders off the U.S. coast only to make a NW turn. Stay tuned.
While sea surface temperatures have “cooled” somewhat in the wake of Dorian, they are still warm along the east coast, adding fuel to tropical systems. As we keep close tabs on Humberto, models are sniffing out another tropical wave (possibly Imelda) reaching the Caribbean late next week and propagating NW towards the east coast by next weekend. While clearly over a week away, and I won’t take a stab yet on its track, I’ll be keeping an eye on this as a possible threat with a number of factors in place for a current burst of activity along our coast. I wrote an extensive post back on August 6th, 2017 on my Facebook page titled, “The Atlantic Is Alive with the Sound of Hurricanes!”. My call for that season was the end of a 12 year drought of no major (CAT3 or stronger) hurricanes to make US landfall. 20 days later, CAT 4 Harvey made landfall in TX. In that post I highlighted previous Northeast hits from Gloria in 1985 to a number of landfalls in 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. Take a close like at the maps showing all the U.S. hits in the 40’s and 50’s (many folks aren’t aware of those brutally active seasons or the devastating hurricanes further back. The point being Hurricanes have hit our coastline for a long time, many of which have been stronger than current ones. Current damage unfortunately has been compounded by massive population growth and buildings over the decades, right along our coasts. Here’s the link for your weekend reading pleasure.
https://www.facebook.com/212824045757499/posts/456292051410696?sfns=mo
As far as Dorian is concerned, perhaps a more detailed post for another day, but my overall forecast had merit with no landfall on the Florida coast and riding the SE coast, making landfall between Myrtle and Morehead (actual landfall was bit north on Cape Hattteras and skimmed Cape Lookout), no landfall for the northeast, yet, and fortunately, damage was kept to a minimum along Florida coast, and less than expected in GA and SC. The Outerbanks did receive tremendous damage to historic structures and changed the coastline creating many new inlets. Also, Dorian was just out of reach traveling NE to have little if any impact along the NJ coast, LI and the Cape (there was a 63 mph gust in Provincetown and over 3″ of rain on Nantucket). As I always explain, whether its snowstorms or hurricanes, the difference of a mere 100 miles can be foot of snow or a dusting and 75-100mph winds with 10″+ of rain to a slight breeze. While not for the Bahamas, it was indeed a close call for most of the east coast.
And for all you sky watchers, at approximately 7:23pm tonight, the Harvest Full Moon rises (closest to the Autumnal equinox, Sept 23rd) which falls on Friday the 13th for the first time in 2 decades (it happens to be my wife’s birthday and she was born on a Friday too). Technically the Moon reaches it’s peak at 12:33am ET, Sept 14. That’s it for now. I will be back shortly with more detailed tropical updates, how the Fall is shaping up. And the ever popular outlook for the upcoming Winter (hint, if you prefer relatively mild temps with occasional nuisance snowfall, you are going to wish you moved south). Enjoy the weekend, Sunday the better day (mostly sunny upper 70’s to low 80’s), cooler on Saturday, yet only a slight chance of a late day or evening shower. And remember, weather never sleeps!
Thanks for the update!