Watching Irene

I know that's it has been awhile, but I needed that time away to gather my thoughts on what was and what is and what is to be.  Not only did I take a brief vaca from central PA, I took it from the global weather patterns as well.  Locally, this month of August has been a very wet month.  In fact, PHL will smash its all-time monthly record rainfall of September 1999 of 13+ inches within that month (mostly due to hurricane Floyd) without any tropical storms but simply the lowering of the atmospheric heights creating numerous showers and thunderstorms.  What that really means is that the surface has still been hot and humid in the early part of the month, but the upper air has been cooling dramatically leading to these outbursts of heavy rainfall.  The Harrisburg area has seen this as well, but closer to the warmer ocean, the storms have been relentless.  Philly will surpass its record tomorrow with the passage of a cold front as shown below.  This front has the potential to create some marginally severe wx, but the bulk of the energy will be to our north and east.  We should see some gusty storms during the afternoon Sunday.

The above is a snapshot of Sunday about 4-5 pm.  But rain could fall at almost anytime tomorrow from 10 am onward.  Once this front passes, much cooler and drier air from O Canada will be ushered in on a brisk NW breeze for Monday.  Highs on Monday and Tuesday will be in the 70s as shown below.  Beautiful weather for fall sports practices....don't cha think?  Highs on Monday...

And highs for Tuesday....

But what I really wanted to give a heads-up on was the potential of PA and the entire east coast of being adversely affected by what will become Hurricane Irene.  We've had 8 tropical storms to date, but not ONE has achieved hurricane status.  That will change with Irene.  Below is the latest satellite image of the tropical waters near North America and where the National Hurricane Center has highlighted areas of interest for tropical storm development.  The area in red labeled as #1 will become Irene maybe by this evening.

Here is another close-up IR satellite image of Irene to be.  Note the circulation of the convection around what will become the warm core eye of the storm.

And here is yet a 3rd satellite image of this area in general showing its proximity to the islands and to Florida and the east coast of the USA.  Harvey is entering Belize south of the Yucatan Peninsula.

I have included the runs from both the American GFS model and the European ECMWF model to compare their projected paths of this tropical becoming extra-tropical storm once to our latitude.  If these paths would verify, flooding rains would be a near certainty in our region in light of the wet August we have had to date.  Here is the GFS track....1st in FL on this upcoming Friday, August 26.

Then over the mid-Atlantic 3 days later....

Again, if that would verify, we'd be looking at a 12-24 period of wind driven squally type rains with the potential of some places to the east of its center receiving 10"+ of rain!  Now here is the Euro's depiction of this system....

What is quite concerning to me from this amount of time out from the event is that both of these global models seem to want to place the center of this monster somewhere near central PA.....and this is 8-9 days away.......so it is something that bears watching.....as does this trailer from one of Jim Carrey's dare I say masterpieces?!?

Have a great weekend!

Smitty

AA:  Storms Sunday leading to nice weather for Monday and Tuesday.....see you Thursday...uuuugh! Then we can talk in person about the upcoming hurricane that may affect PA??!!