Made a nice recovery from the morning with sunshine able to bust through those clouds by afternoon. High Pressure is beginning to settle into New England for a few days. That will set us up for some fine fall weather with cool mornings and mild afternoons. Good, it will give me more time to pour over weather model data for Hurricane Matthew. Here’s a satellite image of him (and various other weather elements):
He’s the circular warm-colored blob that is hammering the eastern end of Cuba this evening. He’s a category 4 storm with winds around 140 mph. keep the people of Haiti & Cuba in your thoughts this evening. Tough day for that part of the world. Matthew now heads for the Bahamas tomorrow maintaining major hurricane status (winds at least 111 mph) while moving through the region (likely right over Nassau). From there, He will move up just east of the coast of Florida–nearing Daytona beach–and then toward South Carolina by Saturday. From this point the forecast becomes difficult to say the least.
Similar to what we saw with Hurricane Hermine, blocking High Pressure (and a cool front) are likely to prevent Matthew from hitting New England directly. Whew. That cool front will sweep out of the Great Lake states on Saturday and then through New England Saturday Night-Sunday Morning. This will likely shove Matthew away from New England but in doing so may actually steal some badly needed rain from him (sharing is caring) and drop it in New England:
This would spare us any coastal flooding/wind concerns but perhaps provide us with an inch of rain (all before 9am Sunday). There is also another possibility–perhaps reality–that we never see anything from Matthew or the cold front but simply, a gorgeous holiday weekend. The European Model suggested this afternoon that Matthew gets completely blocked by High Pressure and never moves north of North Carolina:
Personally, I’m leaning toward that European Model (ECMWF) solution because it is a phenomenal weather computer model that has a great track record especially with tropical systems (IE Sandy, Joaquin). We’ll have a much better handle on Matthew’s track tomorrow and certainly by Thursday—as for your Holiday Weekend plans—keep em intact for now.
~JR