Saturday, September 16, 2017

It's Not Over Until December

Today's GFS forecast shows Hurricane Jose NOT making landfall in the Boston area next week, but instead staying off the coast. If so, it won't be nearly as bad as originally feared. Still, things will be pretty windy at Cape Cod.

There is now a Tropical Storm Lee, but it is likely to die out.

Not so with Tropical Storm Maria. This new storm will likely strike some of the same Caribbean islands Hurricane Irma struck, hitting Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and some of the Bahamas before strengthening for landfall, which could be as far south as Jacksonville, but will more-likely be towards North Carolina and tidewater Virginia in the September 25th time frame.

There is a possibility of tropical storm impacts related to Tropical Storm Norma in the Pacific. That storm will stall near Cabo San Lucas and slowly disintegrate, leading to surprisingly-heavy rains in New Mexico, and possibly southeastern Arizona or western Texas. People frequently ignore these Pacific storms, and they can catch you completely flat-footed. (When I lived in Tucson in 1983, I was shocked at the heavy flooding resulting as Hurricane Octave slowly disintegrated.)

There is also a hypothesized storm in the September 28th time frame. Current modeling shows the storm hitting the Yucatan of Mexico, crossing the Yucatan peninsula, and heading into mainland Mexico. Since the disturbance doesn't yet exist, there's a chance it might not ever exist, but the southern Caribbean is a noted trouble spot, so it bears watching. The storminess straddles Central America, and could appear in either Atlantic or Pacific oceans, or both. And once a storm starts, it can surprise with where it goes.

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