TL;DR: Bebinca expected to cause some damage and disruption to Shanghai but should not be catastrophic. Gordon is sticking it to the fish. Blob off of SEUS may or may not become tropical.
Two features on NHC’s TWO (tropical weather outlook) this morning:
“Barely” tropical storm Gordon (“barely” are NHC’s words) is well offshore and no threat. The more interesting thing is the Orange Blob of Doom off of South Carolina. It now has a temporary ID, AL95, and the models are trying to get a handle on it. To quote the forecasters at the Weather Prediction Center in Washington …
… area of low pressure will strengthen off the Southeast Coast and gradually move north towards the Carolinas. This system is likely to bring gusty winds, heavy rain, coastal flooding, and dangerous beach conditions to the Carolinas and portions of the Mid-Atlantic through mid-week … The National Hurricane Center is also monitoring this system for potential subtropical or tropical development, and has marked this area with a 50% chance of tropical formation over the next 48 hours. There is still quite a bit of uncertainty on the timing, intensity, and track of
this system …
The models are trying to get a lock on the storm, with initial positions varying quite a bit. Here are the major track models – although there is no official track since it’s not a tropical system, the red line is the forecaster consensus …
Bottom line is it will be gusty and rainy along the SE coast the next couple of days, but probably no major risk of hazardous conditions aside from waves/rip currents on the beaches and, in areas that get heavy rain, some flash flooding.
Elsewhere, minimal tropical storm Ileana has made landfall across southern Baja and the Sinaloa coast of Mexico.
Damage reports so far are light.
The big tropical story at the moment is Typhoon Bebinca, which should make landfall near Shanghai in the morning China Standard Time (overnight ET). Here’s the forecast impact swath using my TAOS(tm) TC model:
The storm looks to make landfall as a strong category one on the Saffir/Simpson scale, which would cause upwards of $5 Billion in damage since there are over 93 million people and a lot of infrastructure in the way, so even minor damage starts to add up. Track could be worse, looks to pass just north of the delta so the worst of the storm surge should miss the port, but even still might hit 2 meters in places.
So very disruptive, but if nothing breaks that shouldn’t and the forecast is correct, a relatively quick recovery.
If you like this kind of commentary you can subscribe to the emails (and/or donate to keep it going) at this link. You can also follow us on X/Twitter (@EnkiResearch) or even Facebook if that’s your preferred social media dystopia to wander through.