Yesterday evening the tropical wave meandering across the Atlantic finally got enough structure to get a preliminary fix (or the folks at NCEP got impatient enough to throw a dart into the mess of clouds 😛 ), and we now have some dedicated hurricane track models to look at. But first, the official word from NHC is still in the Tropical Weather Outlook, which looks like this as of 5am:
The system now is tagged with an 80% chance of development – 50% in the next 48 hours, and the text to go with the graphic is now more explicit:
The wave is expected to move near or over Cuba throughout the day and then emerge over the Straits of Florida tonight or Saturday. Environmental conditions are expected to be conducive for additional development after that time, and a tropical depression is likely to form this weekend over the Straits of Florida or eastern Gulf of Mexico near the Florida Peninsula. Tropical storm watches or warnings could be required for portions of Florida later today.
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gtwo.php?basin=atlc&fdays=7
That means later today NHC will almost certainly initiate advisories on this as a Potential Tropical Cyclone, probably at 11am and I’d be shocked if not by 5pm, since it is about 48 hours from the Florida Keys and 60 hours from a possible landfall in the Tampa area.
So what will it be like? A major caution applies here: there is no official forecast, so this is not based on an official forecast because there isn’t one yet. So we have to cook some spaghetti ourselves. As a reminder, I typically don’t do this, but in this case since we don’t have an official forecast yet and the TWO isn’t very specific, and folks are worried, I think it’s needed. So with that in mind, here is what the major track models look like this morning:
As opposed to yesterday, the consensus is now that the developing system will cross Cuba and enter the Gulf, dumping rain across the Hispaniola and Cuba. At that point it enters a favorable environment for development. The question is how much, and that largely depends on how far out into the warm fetid waters of the Gulf the system ventures. The closer it stays to Florida, the less it can develop. There is still some chance it could continue across the Gulf, in which case it might threaten the Mississippi Delta region (and develop more than shown here), but that scenario seems less likely this morning. Here is a plot of the intensity forecast over time. As can be seen, explosive development isn’t expected and the storm should be at most tropical storm as it impacts Florida:
The GFS model track, indicated in the markers in the above map, provides a scenario we can examine to get a picture of the likely impacts:
On this track and intensity, despite three million people being in the way, economic impacts would be $10-20 million US Dollars, mostly just disruptions with light damage. Development into something stronger would not happen until it exits the Florida Peninsula and parallels the Georgia/South Carolina and other Carolina coast.
So the bottom line is that a tropical depression or tropical storm will likely impact the Keys and South West Coast of Florida late this weekend. It should be mostly a breezy rain event with minimal damage. By Monday/Tuesday it will possibly be side swiping the GA/SC coast, again mostly as a rain event. At this point the advice is to check back this evening for sure, expect watches and warnings in Florida, and prepare for a tropical storm. Inconvenient, but not hazardous unless you do dumb stuff or are very unlucky.
More specifically for the Savannah/Beaufort/Hilton Head area, this doesn’t look to be much of a problem at this point. The worst winds (if there are any) should stay offshore, it will likely be mostly a rain event, we might get a couple more inches of rain which, given how wet things are already, will add to the mosquito population and risk flooding like we’ve seen in the last few weeks. If we get onshore winds will have to watch for minor coastal flooding Monday, but that’s about it. Looks like nothing overly hazardous at this point.
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