jm1220

El Niño winters are traditionally back loaded, ie colder and stormier late winter than early. Hopefully blocking can show up but not too stout like often in 09-10.

Heavy rain crept a little further north at the end (I missed double the rain by 20 miles), the cool/refreshing air feels great. Definitely a Fall airmass for the weekend.

The steering flow is turning more west to east as Michael goes into VA. It should head ENE from here and maybe brush Long Island with some heavier rain for a while, but the heavy amounts stay near the lower NJ coast.

The stronger than average SE Ridge will eventually burn us near the coast and force tracks inland. We’ve been on a good run without much blocking but it can’t last forever.

I lived through Sandy too. My town was devastated by it as were many others nearby. It was NOTHING like what areas in the max surge and wind zone saw in Michael. Period. This is a major hurricane strike on GA too from an INLAND direction. We haven’t even really begun to see the real scope of the damage. I bet Panama City is devastated from being in the eyewall for so long despite the surge not being so bad. Port St Joe is also a fairly well populated place in the max surge zone I haven’t seen much from yet.

Uhm, WTF?

Michael soon to be another retiree... Surge damage here will be catastrophic, this is one of the most vulnerable surge locations in the US.

GFS gets the Michael-associated rain shield pretty close, maybe 50 miles SE of Long Island last run. Can't rule out at all a bump north on that and a slower front. It'll be hauling though so flood concerns should be limited. Unfortunately NC/SC doesn't need another drop.

Horrendous commute this morning. Lots of flooded streets/ponding in Long Beach. Bad timing with the heavy rain this morning.

The B storm in 1996 was Bertha I think. I remember it as a windy rainy day for the most part.

My thought a couple of days ago was it would be like a Fran or a little stronger when it hit, now I think it'll be a Cat 2, Isabel-like. The much slower motion will result in a lot more damage though than Isabel caused in the Carolinas (Isabel was worse further north in the Chesapeake from surge)

Conditions looked favorable (and are still somewhat favorable IMO) for it to reach land as a solid Cat 3, even borderline Cat 4 a couple days ago. The storm looks too degraded now for that to take place, but those predictions are always a crap shoot. It may be more of an Isabel intensity when it reaches land, but Isabel was never remembered for wind anyway, by far it was for surge.

Sandy hit NJ as a cat 1. It wasn't overhyped in the least. If anything it ended up even worse than predicted because of how damaging the surge was. I had gusts here to 85 mph maybe, but my town was still devastated by water. A near stalled hurricane on the NC/SC coast will cause horrendous surge damage over multiple tide cycles. Also, the crawl inland will result in massive rain amounts. The records in SC were broken with the Joaquin-associated rain but I wonder how close this will come. Wind won't be as big a factor, but the vast majority of damage and death the big ones cause are water related.

Looking like this will be somewhere between a Fran and Isabel intensity level coming in, but the larger size and fetch will mean a greater surge threat, in addition to the slower speed. The eye becoming less distinct and issues with shear/dry air mean to me that intensity is leveling off and may decrease as it comes near shore and especially as it slows and interacts with land. I’d guess Cat 2 somewhere when the eye wall makes it onshore. The surge though will still be a horrible issue given the slow forward speed and large size.

EWRC's are a roll of the dice as to when they occur. Harvey blew up at a very bad time for the Corpus Christi area, other storms like Rita/Katrina peaked too early and were on a weakening trend as they came in. If overall shear increases as Florence comes ashore (maybe that should still be called an if, considering where the stall/loop may occur and how the ridge builds overhead), it may be enough to disrupt the overall environment for it to come down to maybe Fran-like intensity. If the shear doesn't materialize, there's little to stop it IMO from being Harvey or Hugo-like strength coming in. I'm guessing at a slightly rightward track from current, and coming ashore around Morehead City or over Pamlico Sound given the model trends today, but it's a guess. The Euro being steadfast on a further south track means something, and would be the more devastating scenario IMO.

I’d be hedging on it ticking a little to the right near NC as well given the models being biased a little SW so far and the possible reorientation of the ridge. The Euro has been steadfast though on a landfall on the NC/SC border, which I’d always go with over the GFS. Still a minor chance IMO it doesn’t make landfall and turns right/stalls just offshore. No one wants 30” of rain over a swath of VA/NC so hopefully there can be a shift that can dodge them something of a bullet.

Sandy was a somewhat more tropical and larger/much stronger version of the Perfect Storm 1991 (Perfect Storm was 30mb less deep). The mid latitude strong trough phasing into it added considerable energy to it and kept it from weakening over colder water. I agree that a cat 3 would be more devastating, but it would be in a smaller area. Sandy pressure-wise was about cat 3 and was a massive sized storm that piled up tremendous water. The NW path also took that surge right into NY Harbor. A paralleling the coast track would be the worst. Irene could've been horrendous had it not been eaten up by dry air as it came into NC and weakening rapidly. Better atmospheric conditions would've had it come into NC as a strong cat 3 and maybe up here as a cat 2 still. Same for Gloria.

Looking at the GFS trending east from last run-it’s the GFS, but minor changes to the ridge can mean a significant change to track at day 5-6. Still plenty of time for that to allow a recurve before landfall due to a further east ridge orientation. Not that climo dictates outcome by any means, but we will really need a stout and flat ridge to allow a landfall from the current position. It could certainly happen but it’s practically unheard of for a reason. It’s so easy for a trough or ridge weakness to pick it up at some point before making it to mainland from here.

Still time for the ridge to reorient itself and Florence to make an earlier north turn and miss the mainland. The Euro turned the storm a little sooner into NC instead of a Hugo track. But we’d want a strong trend east soon to discount serious impacts somewhere in the SE or Mid Atlantic.

We hope for table scraps and be thrilled with more just like with the vast majority of summer storms.

Brief very light shower down here and occasional thunder.

Had a fairly brief heavy shower here with loud thunder.

I can see the thunderheads over Manhattan/Staten Island from here, nice anvil tops. Hope it's fun underneath it. Maybe a few scraps can make it here.

I didn’t have one drop yesterday. Was a classic boundary just inland situation where storms developed a few miles north of me. There were a few rumbles of thunder and times when the sky darkened but that’s it. Photogenic at times with towering cumulus nearly overhead but otherwise nada.

Nice thunderheads/tall cumulus just north of me by Sunrise Highway. Unfortunately it looks to be lifting north. This event has been mostly a snoozer here.