Steve’s Weather Blog – 08/30/2016

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Tropically Speaking:

First on the list is Category Two Hurricane Gaston in the central Atlantic. Gaston has been most impressive on satellite photography yesterday and this morning:

Since Gaston is no threat to land, we’ll just admire his pretty satellite pics and move on … to Tropical Depression Eight, off the Carolina coast:

TD8 is just off of the North Carolina coast this morning. Maximum winds with Eight are 35 mph and it’s moving mostly to the north very slowly. The storm will turn to the northeast later today and head out into the Atlantic. It is likely a little intensification will take place, perhaps making Tropical Storm status of 39 mph sustained winds. There are Tropical Storm Warnings flying for the entire outer banks of North Carolina. Other than a lot of rain and some coastal flooding, the system won’t be affecting land.

Which leads us to … Tropical Depression Nine:

This morning, Nine has seen an eruption of convection on the southeastern side of the center of circulation as well as a drop in central pressure. However, this has yet to correlate to an increase in overall strength. And while the current westerly shear that has been affecting the system is expected to lessen today, it’s going to be a slow rise in intensity for Nine. Dry air will be mostly west of the system and could be entrained into the storm beginning later today or on Wednesday. This means that intensity may not ramp up as much as I thought yesterday. It will need to be watched closely in that regard.

As far as the forecast track is concerned, model consensus has been and continues to be towards and along the Big Bend area of Florida with a landfall as a Tropical Storm.

Even though Nine will not be directly hitting the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the effects of the storm are already being felt here. There is to be a Coastal Flood Watch put into effect this evening (Tuesday). Here is the text of this morning’s advisory from the National Weather Service in New Orleans:

And, on the land side of things, we’re going to warm up. Some three to five degrees above normal for Thursday and somewhat cooler on Friday, both days still warmer than usual. You can thank Nine‘s proximity to us for that.

That’s it for this morning. Find somewhere cool!

– Meteorologist Steve Taylor