Blog: Lots of local rain, Helene strengthens over Gulf (updated)

Posted: Sep 25, 2024 / 09:20 AM EDT

Updated: Sep 25, 2024 / 04:14 PM EDT

Update: As of 11am Helene is now a hurricane. Updated track below.

Before we get to Helene I want to talk about our local weather. Overnight, we had a large area of showers (and thunderstorms) move into our region.

This continued during the morning commute. Our Future Trak model actually picked up on this feature yesterday, but the rain came in earlier and more south than forecast. It caused some issues during the morning commute, but the showers were starting to decrease as we headed into the mid-morning. We ended up getting a lot of rain in our inland areas over the last 24 hours.

It was good that we got some more rain, but the timing wasn’t great. Plus, some isolated areas didn’t even need it. We don’t have any huge weather features in the area causing this. However, I believe it was mainly from a weak warm front near the area and a lot of moisture.

High pressure is offshore with a big area of low pressure over the north/central Atlantic. The weak warm front will lift to our north today. This will allow the showers to become more isolated.

With the warm front lifting to our north, the surface wind will turn out of the southeast. It will be light, but it will help to pull in more humid air. Between that and some peeks of sunshine, we should be able to warm up to near 80 degrees this afternoon.

We’ll actually stay warm and humid for the next few days.

Tomorrow, we’ll still have lots of clouds, but there won’t be much rain. I only expect some isolated showers. However, it will be a different story on Friday as a large rain band moves up into our region.

This will be indirectly from Helene. So now’s a good time to talk about that feature. This morning tropical storm Helene was strengthening near the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico. It was almost up to hurricane strength with sustained winds of 70mph.

Update: Helene is now a category 1 hurricane.

It is moving over some very warm/hot water over the Gulf of Mexico. Sea surface temps down there are in the upper 80s to low 90s.

There’s also lower wind shear along Helene’s path. So rapid strengthening is expected today. It will become a hurricane soon, and then it will become a major hurricane within the next 24-36 hours. It will then aim for an area near the big bend of Florida some time Thursday evening.

Before landfall, there will be a large area of coastline affected by storm surge.

Some areas near the landfall zone could see 10-15ft of surge.

The storm will then move inland and north.

Through the day Friday Helene will move north and then take a bend to the west. This will be due to a large upper level trough (dip in the jet stream) that will pull the system literally to the west and round that low.

By the weekend it should just be a weak/broad area of low pressure. The rain will stack up over the course of that time. It could be near a foot in some isolated areas, and that may not even be near where it makes landfall.

The models are in very good agreement on the track with a couple of outliers.

So the track is good for us in terms of wind. The problem is that, basically, a large rain band will extend to the east of the storm. We may have that large rain band move up into or region. Rain may be heavy for a time.

There could also be a few strong storms depending on which model you believe. I’d say our Future Trak has a little sun in the morning which heats us up. That would allow for some instability. However, the GFS has rain for most of the day. That would cap the temps and probably create some lower instability.

The models do show some isolated to scattered showers on Saturday.

This would probably just be from the deep moisture in the area and a lack of high pressure. However, the upper-level low is now forecast to slide east over the weekend. This means that we could have some scattered showers on Sunday.

This may continue into Monday as well as the upper-level feature slowly slides to the east. The problem is that the Neptune Festival is this weekend. We don’t want it to rain at the oceanfront. Luckily, the sand sculptures on in a tented area. I will be down at a tented booth on Sunday.

There is another tropical disturbance in the eastern Atlantic that has a high chance of formation, but It would likely stay out to sea.