Significant threat from heavy rains, due to many areas already saturated from a storm system that just cleared out. Will try to stay current.
Scott Mandia update 5:43 EDT August 26:
I finally have some good news. Although the track is still bad (making 2nd landfall on Long Island) Irene is being weakened by upper level wind shear and some dry air that has entered. She is a cat 2 right now but is expected to weaken to a category 1 before hitting the NC coast and remain a category 1 as she moves northward. So, it appears at this time we can expect a minimal category 1 hurricane hitting here late Sunday morning or early afternoon. Winds will still be high at 75 mph – 85 mph so there will be downed trees and power outages but perhaps not quite as bad as could have been.
Of course, Irene could still strengthen but it is not expected to do so. Now we need to hope that Irene tracks more to the east and weakens further so we can back to our lives next week with minimal impact.
We are certainly not our of the woods this year. The PEAK of hurricane season is early September so we are not even half way.
Good luck to us all!
From Jeff Masters Weather Underground, 3:46 PM EDT, August 26
Forecast for Irene
With its eyewall collapsed and just 18 more hours over water before landfall, Irene does not have time to build a new eyewall and intensify. The storm is too large to weaken quickly, and the best forecast is that Irene will be a strong Category 1 hurricane at landfall in North Carolina on Saturday. Based on the latest wind analysis from NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division (Figure 2) and Irene’s continued weakening trend, I predict that the 80-mile section of North Carolina coast to the right of where Irene makes landfall will receive sustained hurricane-force winds of 75 – 85 mph on Saturday at landfall; the 80-mile section of coast to the left will receive 55 – 75 mph winds. High wind shear of 30 knots will begin ripping into Irene Sunday morning when it is near Southern New Jersey, and more rapid weakening will occur. By the time Irene arrives on Long Island Sunday afternoon, it will probably have top sustained winds in the 65 – 75 mph range. However, since Irene is such a huge storm–tropical storm force winds extend out up to 290 miles from the center–it has set a massive amount of the ocean’s surface in motion, which will cause a much larger storm surge than the winds would suggest. At 3:30 pm EDT this afternoon, a wind analysis from NOAA/HRD (Figure 2) indicated that the potential storm surge damage from Irene still rated a 5.0 on a scale of 0 to 6. This is equivalent to the storm surge a typical Category 4 hurricane would have. While this damage potential should steadily decline as Irene moves northwards and weakens, we can still expect a storm surge one full Saffir-Simpson Category higher than Irene’s winds when it impacts the coast. Since tides are at their highest levels of the month this weekend due to the new moon, storm surge flooding will be at a maximum during the high tidal cycles that will occur at 8 pm Saturday night and 8 am Sunday morning. Wherever Irene happens to be at those times, the storm surge damage potential will be maximized. I continue to give a 20% chance that a 3 – 4 foot storm surge high enough to over-top the Manhattan flood walls and swamp the New York City subway system will occur on Sunday. The latest 11 am probabilistic storm surge map from NHC shows a 20 – 30% chance of a storm surge in excess of 3 feet in New York Harbor (Figure 4.) Keep in mind that these maps are calculated for normal tide level, and this weekend’s high tides will be nearly 1 foot above normal.
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