Let’s talk turkey… Most likely, Hurricane Matthew gets suppressed well south of us this weekend. Yes, it’s still going to be a powerful hurricane that may prove to damage much of the Florida east coast, and yes, it’s still a close pass to the South Carolina coast, but the long term pattern favors pinning the storm off the Southeast Coast vs. working it’s way up.
That means impact to New England is likely limited, although there is some question how much moisture can move in over the weekend and perhaps provide some rain late Saturday or Saturday night. In addition, rough seas and rip currents will be prominent across the south facing coast of New England. Not only this weekend, but through much of early next week.
Why the shift south in the northern part of the forecast cone? The trough moving in from the west is flatter and a bit quicker. That means it won’t dip down and pull Matthew north, and all the way up the coast. In addition, the high moving in from the west will build over us and suppress any storm well south or east of us. You can clearly see the famed Euro(European) vs. GFS(American) battle is actually in good agreement with that this morning. In fact, many members show Matthew making a giant loop off the Southeast Coast early to mid week next week. Whether that happens remains to be seen. FWIW… the Euro has been very good on verifying location and timing within 5days on Matthew. First graphic below is the Euro, the 2nd is the GFS.
While forecast models can flip flop, the fact the ensembles within each model show good agreement, and many different models agree with the trend, it’s hard to see it completely flipping back the other way. I think the main question for us is when/if we can catch a period of rain in here this weekend and how heavy would it be? Right now, the best chance looks like like Saturday/Saturday night. That’s something we’ll fine tune as we get closer to the weekend. Giving the trend, I’m much more optimistic this morning that the threat, for damaging winds/major coastal impacts from a close passing hurricane, is quite low in terms of being part of our weekend. Hopefully this trend holds for us. In the meantime, the east coast of Florida will need to prep for the worst and hope for the best. We’ll keep an eye on it. JR will have the latest this afternoon.
For now, enjoy, beautiful Fall weather settling in the next few days. It turns milder Thursday and Friday.
@clamberton7-twitter