Growing forecast consensus: TD9/Futureimelda will turn east

As always, for the official word, check NHC’s Key messages regarding Tropical Depression Nine (en Español: Mensajes Claves) for a nice summary. While Tropical Depression Nine hasn’t yet become a tropical storm, it does seems to be slowly consolidating as it enters the Bahamas. Here’s the view at 6:45, the sun has risen over Humerto but not TD9, so here is the view in Infrared:

Hard to find TD9 in that mess with the front stalled just offshore of the Southeastern US! Here’s the view with current watches and warnings, along with the NHC forecast tracks:

The global and dedicated tracking models are in much better alignment this morning that TD9 will become a tropical storm (Imelda), but turn out to sea in the wake of the stronger Humberto:

So what does it all mean? While the storm is going to be uncomfortably close, t’s looking increasingly better for the SEUS coast in terms of impacts. Here is the ECMWF AIFS model for Tuesday at 8pm, about the time of closest approach to the Frogmore (GA/SC) coast:

… and the same from GFS:

They are very similar in terms of impacts. GFS shows a closer swipe to the Florida coast than AIFS on Monday. In both cases, the major impacts are waves and shallow coastal flooding around high tides on Monday and Tuesday, some gusty winds right on the coastline (more so for Florida it seems). Rain is an interesting and complex question. GFS doesn’t really show that much in Georgia, with that dry air I’ve pointed out before getting sucked into the circulation. Here’s the mid level water vapor view from GOES-East this morning for the southeast … it’s really dry (brown):

So rain totals in GA and southern SC stay below 3″. Further north (Charleston to central NC) shows more rain … here the 24 hour rain forecast for 2am Tuesday to 2am Wednesday:

The summary as of Sunday morning is that there may still be watches for the GA/SC coasts, but this is looking more and more to be “inconvenient” rather than “hazardous,” much less “dangerous” with some common sense. If you are in a low lying area near the coast or marsh, you should prepare for tides a couple feet above normal, but because we’re at 1st quarter moon, that will help keep them down some, so we’re looking at below 10ft MLLW, which is when problems kick in (right now the forecast is officially at 8.5ft, but I think it will be higher due to storage in the marshes).

As for closings, especially schools, that’s as much a political decision as it is based on safety and hazards, and as I’ve discussed it’s complicated because for the public schools transportation logistics are a huge factor. Right now even for Tybee Island and the exposed areas in SC it looks like winds will stay below the threshold you start to worry about school busses (aka cheesewagons), but it’s close. We’ll just have to watch and see, since so much of what businesses and others decide is driven by what the schools do.

Will post again this afternoon or if anything interesting comes up.

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