Thursday, August 4, 2011

Will Emily threaten the Carolinas coast?


Sometimes weak tropical weather systems can be nightmarish to predict, and such is the case with Tropical Storm Emily.

But since some of you are headed to the beach this weekend or next week, here's the latest thinking on how Emily might impact the Carolinas coast.

First of all, at the time of this writing (1:15 p.m. Eastern), it looks as if Emily is dying. The closed circulation has opened, and it appears as if the mountains of Haiti and the Dominican Republic are bashing the storm. In a few hours, it's possible Emily could be history.

If that's so, ignore the rest of this.

But if it should survive, what happens?

The majority of the computer models continue to insist that Emily will make a northeast turn away from the U.S. mainland, once it moved north of about Daytona Beach, Fla. A trough in the western Atlantic is predicted to bring Emily's path from west-northwest to north-northwest, and then the system is expected to get caught in the westerlies.

The National Hurricane Center's predicted track for the storm carries it about 200 miles east of the Carolinas coast, which means beachgoers probably won't have to worry about rainy weather.

However, they will have to contend with rough surf and rip currents, from about Sunday until Tuesday.

Let's see what happens over the next few hours.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Our moronic local TV stations have been hyping this non-event for the past few days. Now The Observer chimes in. More Chicken Little nonsense.

Anonymous said...

Well, maybe it beats trumpeting these non-"record highs" which are so popular now.

Anonymous said...

How is this hyping this non-event? Did you actually read the blog or did you just assume that you in your ultimate wisdom knew what it would say? If anything, this blog de-hypes the event. It says that the storm is likely about to die and if it doesn't it'll end up just bothering some fish 200 miles off the coast.

Anonymous said...

I read some readers post yesterday about it hitting landfall between Charleston and Savannah. I wonder why he thinks that. We do really need the rain in the Charlotte area and if no damage was done I would love to see the eastern side of this storm to pass right over the Charlotte area.