This morning Hurricane Helene had 2 concentric eye walls around the center that may have been competing with each other. This may have briefly paused the strengthening that the storm was undergoing for a time. This wasn’t evident on satellite, but it was mentioned by the National Hurricane Center.
Rain bands have already been making their way onto land well ahead of the center of the storm.
As mentioned for the past couple of days, the water temps down there are in the upper 80s to near 90 degrees.
Helene is also in a zone of lower wind shear. So the upper level outflow is healthy. I think one of the eye walls have started to overtake the other. This has probably allowed the storm to strengthen into a category 2 hurricane. The system is moving to the north/northeast. It will move towards the Big Bend area of Florida during the day while it strengthens some more. It is currently forecast to make landfall as a category 3 hurricane.
However, the forecast for landfall strength has gone up and down a little bit over the past couple of days. Either way they are likely going to have sustained surface winds over 110mph this evening. They are also going to have a very high storm surge across the Big Bend region. One small strip is forecast to have a surge of 15-20ft.
There will also be a lot of heavy rain along and north of the track.
After landfall Helene will still be a hurricane as it moves through Tallahassee FL, Valdosta GA, and Albany GA.
It has been a long time (at least that I can remember) since that particular region has had a direct impact from a hurricane.
Through Friday the storm will continue to track north and then to the northwest and west. This will be as it starts interacting with a big upper level low.
The wind and storm surge will likely have a big impact on infrastructure down there. However, heavy rain will be pushing well north of the center. It will run all the way up to western North Carolina and Virginia today. Then there will be more heavy rain out there tomorrow.
The winds will decrease, but rain showers will fall over the Tennessee River Valley and the southern Appalachians for a while. They will continue out there on Saturday. Then the upper level low will move east on Sunday.
They will likely have flooding from the Gulf coast all the way up through the Appalachians.
It could get really bad over parts of western Virginia and North Carolina.
As far as our local weather goes… Today we have a couple of stationary fronts near the area along with a LOT of humidity.
We’ll be mostly cloudy today, but I think we’ll only have some isolated showers in the region. High temps will be in the low 80s, and it will be humid. We’ll have a light southeast wind.
Tomorrow does get a little tricky. The theme is set though. It looks like a rain band will move up into northeast North Carolina and southeast Virginia. The GFS model has light rain as early as the morning with even more during the afternoon.
However, our Future Trak model only has some isolated showers in the morning. It does have a broken band of showers and storms moving in by the afternoon.
If the GFS is right then the rain will be earlier, lighter, and more widespread. If our Future Trak model is right, then the rain will form later, and it will be much heavier. This will be due to the temps being able to rise more and create some instability. We’ll definitely have high humidity. So I think temps and amount of sunshine are the question marks. For now I’m forecasting high temps in the low 80s and only a small amount sun in the morning. I even think there will be some isolated showers in the morning. Then I do agree that scattered thunderstorms will form in the afternoon.
Even outside of any storms we will have some wind gusts to 25mph out of the south/southeast.
So if the storms do get going, then we may have a few strong to severe storms. There even could be some isolated tornadoes in the area.
This should then move north and decrease going into Friday night. Even with the wetter GFS scenario we are not looking at a lot of rain here. I think we are looking at about a quarter to a half an inch with a little higher amounts inland/west.
The upper level low will stay to our west on Saturday. We’ll have a mix of sun and clouds with only some isolated showers. High temps will be in the low 80s. It could be a pretty decent day, but it will be humid.
By Sunday the upper level low will be moving in from the west. We’ll have mostly cloudy skies. There will probably be some scattered showers with isolated t’storms. This will impact the Neptune Festival.
That upper level low will probably linger into Monday. This will bring us some more scattered rain showers. At least we’ll cool down to the 70s.
But there’s more….
Tropical storm Isaac has formed in the north/central Atlantic. This is moving to the east.
It will move away from our region, but it could briefly become a hurricane well west of the Azores. It won’t have a direct impact on our weather, but it could send us some more high waves over the next several days.
There is also a tropical disturbance in the eastern Atlantic.
It has a high chance of formation, but it should stay out to sea.
Meteorologist: Jeremy Wheeler