Significant Coastal Storm Expected This Weekend Across The Carolinas & Mid-Atlantic States: All signs are pointing towards a coastal storm that will impact the Eastern Seaboard from the Carolinas to Southern New England beginning on Saturday and lasting through early next week. This storm looks to bring some significant impacts, including moderate to major coastal flooding, gusty onshore winds and heavy rain to areas including coastal parts of the Carolinas and the Mid-Atlantic States, as well as Long Island and Southern New England.
What looks to occur is that a low pressure system will form just offshore of the South and North Carolina coastlines on Saturday and then move northward near coastal parts of the Mid-Atlantic states during Sunday. From there, this storm system may end up moving close to Long Island and the south coast of New England on Monday before it turns eastward and moves out away from the US East Coast.
It should be noted that this storm system will not be a tropical system at first & likely will begin its life as a non-tropical nor’easter type storm. That being said, there is the possibility that this storm system could transition into a sub-tropical storm system as it interacts with the very warm waters of the Gulf Stream as we get into Sunday and Monday. Should this storm system become a sub-tropical storm, it would get a name & it’s name would be Karen.
Whether this storm system becomes a sub-tropical storm or not, the impacts along the East Coast will be exactly the same.
What Sort Of Impacts Could This Storm Bring? It is very likely that this storm system will bring days of very gusty winds, soaking heavy rainfall, moderate to major coastal flooding, rough surf and beach erosion. These impacts would start in the Carolinas and the Mid-Atlantic states this weekend and then spread northward into Southern New England early next week.
There are some uncertainties to this storm system & this has more to do with how bad will the impacts be. While the surf is very likely to very rough and there will definitely be beach erosion, it’s unclear as to how severe the coastal flooding will be. Also, it’s unclear right now as to how strong the winds will be along the coast and how far inland will these strong winds spread.
Based on what I’m seeing in the model guidance, I would say that moderate to even major coastal flooding could occur this weekend from the North Carolina Outer Banks northward through the Chesapeake to the Jersey Shore. Also, wind gusts of 40 to 60 mph seem most possible right along the coast from the Carolinas northward to Southern New England. Finally, expect a soaking rain with amounts of 2 to 5 inches possible this weekend from eastern North Carolina and eastern Virginia northward to coastal parts of New Jersey.
Those of you along the coastline from the Carolinas northward through the Mid-Atlantic coastline to Long Island and Southern New England should be ready for a long-duration storm that lasts several days. This means that you should expect prolonged coastal flooding that occurs over multiple high-tide cycles, especially for the area from North Carolina Outer Banks to the Jersey Shore & possibly as far north as Long Island and Southern New England. Also, you might want to prepare for a prolonged gusty wind event with wind gusts of up to 40-60 mph, which could cause some damage.
Bottom Line Is That A significant coastal storm looks increasingly very likely to occur this weekend from the Carolinas and points northward to as far as Southern New England.
Tropical Storm Jerry: Jerry is a sheared tropical storm that actually looked better yesterday than it does right now. The low-level center of the storm is not lined up at all with the deep convection that’s occurring with the storm. Even with this, reconnaissance aircraft have found that the storm has 60 mph maximum winds.
Jerry is moving very quickly to the west-northwest as a high pressure ridge to the north of the storm steers it in this direction. The western end of this high pressure ridge stops at about the longitude of the Lesser Antilles with a weakness in the high pressure ridge found just to the northwest of the Lesser Antilles.
This means that Jerry will begin to turn to the northwest sometime during the day on Thursday and because of this, the center of Jerry should pass only about 60-80 miles to the northeast of the northern Leeward Islands during Thursday evening. Because of this close pass to the northern Leeward Islands, rain squalls and gusty winds will likely affect the Leeward Islands during Thursday into Friday. Of some particular concern are the islands of Antigua, Barbuda, St. Barts, St. Martin and Anguilla where wind gusts of up to 50-60 mph could occur during Thursday night. Finally, Jerry will produce rainfall totals of 2 to 4 inches across much of the Leeward Islands starting on Thursday and lasting into Friday & this could lead to localized flood issues.
As for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, Jerry does not pose a direct threat, however, moisture trailing behind Jerry as the storm pulls north will lead to an increased rain threat throughout this weekend.
Finally, Jerry does not pose a threat to Bermuda as the storm is expected to turn to the north and northeast well east of the island.
The next tropical weather discussion will be issued on Thursday.