Hey, good Tuesday morning everybody.
Our chief meteorologist Brad and
Michelle do an update on Elsa the good
news with AL said that the forecast
track is pretty straightforward
and even the intensity forecast.
There's a little bit of wiggle room,
but overall we've got a pretty
good handle on this system.
I've seen, basically about ten
consecutive advisories where we're
pretty much have the same track,
so that's kind of nice to
have that kind of consistency.
It's a really interesting storm, too.
If you've been watching me
the last couple of days,
you know the storm is very lopsided.
I'm gonna zoom in on the
center of it because.
It's just to the West of Key West,
FL and what I mean by lopsided
is the storm is not symmetric.
He doesn't have equal weather on all sides.
So if you look at the circulation,
it's actually on the West side
of this big blob of moisture.
Which bad news for Florida and the keys?
That's where they are.
They're on the worst side.
There's really dry air moving in
from the northwest side of this
thing that is really affecting it,
and there's also a whole bunch of wind shear,
and what I mean by wind shear.
There's actually winds pushing
the storms off of the center.
That wind shear is problematic.
Four hurricanes they don't
like to have wind around them.
They like to create their own win.
So the fact that you've got dry air,
what we call being and trained,
and the wind shear likely means this storm
is not going to get much stronger overtime,
even though it's over the very
warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
The other dilemma is,
as it's kind of been shifting
a little East here initially,
the center it's going to be
hugging the coast a little more,
which means more of the circulation
is going to start moving over land,
which means it's going to have a tough time.
Developing even further,
so let's put the official forecast
cone on there and you can see the
track and again there will be
an updated track here coming up
shortly right around 11:00 o'clock.
I don't anticipate much change
because it's been fairly consistent.
In fact,
if I throw the forecast models up there,
they're all clustered together.
It's pretty much I-95 up the East Coast
and then off the off the areas near lot,
basically right around the Northfolk area.
But let's take a quick
look at the timing of this,
so it's going to move up here today.
Uh,
you know.
Basically be up here in Florida
moving inland sometime,
probably late tonight early tomorrow and then
it's going to be up here in your Brunswick,
GA as we go into the day tomorrow
morning and then by the afternoon.
It's way up here by evening
up near Virginia Beach,
so look at that.
That is basically flying to
the North and east.
And again it's going to be
a tropical depression at
that time, which means likely
some pretty weak conditions as
it moves to the north and east.
Just real quickly,
the guidance is fairly consistent.
It's probably maxed out where it is now.
Could it perk up? Maybe the 70?
There's still a chance that could do that,
and there is some wiggle room there.
You know, in the high end
it's here low end here,
but you could see it's pretty much for the
next 24 hours maintaining that drops off.
And then we're hovering right around Tropical
storm to tropical depression strength,
you know, when even the outliers are
barely into their hurricane force,
that's good sign.
And here's another look at that guidance.
You know that that's that's
what you want to see.
Tightly clustered area of guidance there.
Here's a look at the infrared imagery.
Real quick and again,
I'm going to flip this over to the high res.
Just 'cause I think there's some
cool things you can actually see.
The center is like right in here.
You see how it's kind of naked
or like exposed.
The deep thunderstorms off to these so the
center could get tugged to the east more,
which means more interaction with Florida.
But either way,
it's it's having a tough time.
This is not a sign of a
really healthy system,
but as I mentioned doesn't
matter to Florida because.
They're under the worst weather,
so tornadoes, flash,
flooding, even storm surge,
probably up to three to five
feet in a few locations.
So let's look at this futurecast
on where it's going to be going
and what it's going to look like
going through the Carolinas.
Alright,
so let's take a look at the future of Elsa.
Elsa is going to be moving to the north,
you could see it moving up through Florida.
Notice the time frame.
This is later.
Tonight we go into tomorrow morning.
It's in northern Florida into the afternoon
hour starts moving up into South Carolina.
And again doesn't look like a
lot in the Charlotte area.
We can't rule out an isolated shower
storm tomorrow in the afternoon,
but the chances are pretty pretty much 3040%.
But then we go into early Thursday,
so this is 6:00 AM Thursday.
This will probably be the worst
of the weather in Charlotte.
Will be interesting to see how much
of this rain band this Northwest side.
There's going to be a really
sharp gradient here where there's
absolutely nothing and then a deluge,
but pretty much.
Here's I-95, you could see it right there.
Basically along.
And east of there,
that's where the worst weather
is going to be.
Will go into Thursday morning
that that's really heavy rain
there in eastern North Carolina.
And again there will be some
storm surge issues because of
the strong onshore wind here.
So especially eastern North Carolina,
I think we will see above average ties.
Maybe one to three feet higher than average,
and then we go into the
afternoon Thursday and the
system by Thursday night is gone.
So you can see, that's a fairly quick.
So that's Thursday morning,
boom, boom, boom, boom.
You know by Thursday afternoon,
if you're on the beaches of South Carolina,
things could actually be drying out
because you've got to offshore wind,
which is a drying air drying flow.
And then it pushes off to the
northeast and and there you go.
Go on real quickly.
I want to show you. A quick look
at the precipitation or rainfall.
You kind of see that bullseye there along 95
E generally in the one to three inch range,
some localized heavier.
But look at this sharp gradient.
I mean, Monroe might get an inch.
Charlotte might get 1/2 an
inch and Hickory might get.
1/4 of an inch wins.
This is not a big wind maker.
You know.
Outer Banks.
It's certainly going to be very breezy,
and I think this is the one area where
we could see tropical storm gusts at
least eastern North Carolina Pamlico Sound,
Albemarle Sound and then out towards
you know the Outer Banks just exposed,
so there's going to be a much higher
chance of seeing 40 to 45 mile wins.
But most of the coast is looking
at 3035 and then inland 15 to 20,
so really not a huge deal now you've
seen me show this map a couple of times.
And I'm actually going to kind of move this,
shrink it down so it's a little bit
easier to see and move in the legend here.
So this is where I look at for storm surge,
so you could see some of the highest
water levels are down here in Georgia
just because of the shape of the coast.
Again,
you've got this concave shape so
the water gets pushed in there
so around Savannah might see some
pretty high water levels,
but as you go up the coast the water
levels are a little bit lower,
but that's only half the story.
One of the things we look at
is called inundacion.
How much water is going to
come on areas that normally?
Don't see water,
so if we look at this real quickly,
let's see if it's actually going to
show up and let me see if it plots
'cause it's having a tough time plot and
it looks like there let me re plot it here,
will refresh it and see if it'll.
Refresh there.
Think we're all there we go,
I gotta change it to the
Gulf Coast to the Atlantic's.
OK,
there we go.
So you could see some of these
water levels and again down here
below my head you could see you know
these light Blues dark Blues are
like 1 to 2 1/2 you get into the
greens and yellows you're getting
more towards 3/4 but you could see
a lot of this is intercoastal and
intermodal in your title areas where
that normally gets high water.
Anyways you're not looking at a
bunch of issues but
you could see a couple areas there
could be some high water especially
down in South Carolina as you go
move north into North Carolina.
Ocean now looks like a little area on
on on the on the intercoastal side.
There could be some higher water,
but just to give you a quick glance
at some of the water levels and
again keep an eye on your tides.
There's a Holden beach and then Oak Island.
You see some of the higher water,
then towards the Outer Banks you
could see some of these levels.
Again, I don't think this is
too off the charts,
but you know with with sea
level rise and subsidence,
some of these areas are flooding more
frequently and flooding that haven't
flooded in the past with less water rise.
So just to you know.
If you're near the water,
especially right close to sea level,
you might want to move the car.
Get things up off because there
could briefly be some water one to
three feet above that meeting stage,
so just a heads up that this system is
going to be moving up fairly quickly
and out of here that if it occurs
in your high tide in your location.
Just be ready for that.
I'll keep an eye on the system throughout
the afternoon as it moves through,
but right now it looks like this is
going to be a big rainmaker on Thursday
for the I-95 and East corridor,
and then it's out of here fairly quickly.
Of course, stay tuned.
There are some new tropical storm
watches that were just issued for
parts of the South Carolina coast.
You see this area in blue real quickly.
There's already a tropical storm watch here.
We might see tropical storm watches
extended up the coast or warnings even
though it technically would be a depression.
Some of the impacts,
specially in the Outer Banks I
think is likely going to see a
tropical storm watch just because
of the potential of tropical storm
force winds out in that area.