GFDL Tracks Eye Over Lancaster PA

Yeah, I said that right!  As we get closer to the Saturday night-Monday morning time frame, it seems that the models are now trying to hone in onto every small detail and develop a solution that pinpoints the storm's exact track. 

The global models still keep then storm out just off the coast then move inland around NYC and up into eastern NY or New England.  Whatever that case might be, it will be a most damaging and disruptive storm and one that will sadly lead to loss of life and great loss of property.  With that said, let's look at some of the modeling specifics.  First the GFDL that tracks Irene literally right up the Chesapeake Bay and nearly up the Susquehanna River into NY and southern Canada.  Here is the position of the storm at 8 pm Sunday evening.  Note the 90+ knot winds that encompass the entire Susquehanna River Valley.  That would be ugly for us here in central PA!

Here is the HWRF for 12 hours earlier with the eye still over the ocean at about our latitude.  If I were a betting man, this is what I believe will occur as the storm will seek the path of lowest pressure and that should be along the dying frontal boundary along with the warmer ocean water.  This is just a totally devastating track for the beaches along the east coast and complete total inundation along low lying areas of the coastal communities.  UGLY doesn't even cut it!  This is a most formidable situation.  With high tides around 12:00 noon Sunday along the Jersey beaches, this is a grave situation for coastal flooding with the model below.  Strong onshore winds piling the the water with the help of the incoming tide will lead to historic type flooding in these coastal communities!  I hate to say that, but that is how I see it, in my humble opinion.

Here is the tide chart for central NJ at Beach Haven Crest in Little Egg Harbor behind LBI.  The high tide is at 9:54 am.  The storm's position above nearly corresponds at almost the same time as high tide for central NJ.  Not good!  The only higher tide is at 10 pm Sunday night, but by then the damage will have been done.

Just stay tuned for any quick jaunts in the path of the storm.  Again, I believe this storm will tend to stay over the ocean as most storms want to do this along the natural baroclinicity of the atmosphere.  Hurricanes are creatures of their own, however.  But once to the middle latitudes, larger scale global synoptic forces tend to take over, and I believe the storm will hug the coast.  Once to NY, it will come inland.  This will be a massive disruption along the east coast and the only thing that could have made this worse is if it were Labor Day Weekend!  I'll leave you with one more graphic and that is the GFS depiction for Sunday at 2 pm.  This is from the 12Z run.

I'll try to update once again early tomorrow morning......Go PA Beech Creek Little League!

Have a good Friday and get things together for what might be one heckuva storm this weekend, especially in the eastern part of our state.

Smitty

AA:  Irene will be a major storm even for us here in south central PA!