Heavy Rain Tomorrow, Katia Makes a Close Pass Late Week

Let's start with Katia, since I am sure she is on the mind of most people right now. It is the #1 question that has been asked of me over the past few days. Everyone has hurricane fever! Or, the more likely scenario is that people just want to make small talk about the weather and hurricanes are the hot thing right now. I am no good at small talk.

As I have been mentioning on and off via my Twitter feed (which you can find directly to the right), the forecast models have been a bit schizophrenic with Katia's projected path for a wide variety of reasons. The foremost reason having to do with Lee's progress. Now that Lee has made landfall officially, the model trends are starting to verify on a one particular path. But, there is still some room for error. Take a look at the image below from 4 of the more reliable models.

These 4 panels show the different projected position of Katia on Friday at 3am. Notice the disparity. All of the models have Katia running into a trough of low pressure over the east coast and getting pushed out to sea. The positioning of this low pressure trough has been a subject of great debate for the forecast models up to this point. A very slow moving cold front combined with tropical storm Lee moving northeast from the Gulf has created a bit a of a log jam in our atmosphere.

Nevertheless, the NAM model (upper right) is the only model that brings the storm close to New England. It also has Katia being a very strong hurricane at the time of her passage. Both of these scenarios seem unlikely. Katia will pass well west of Bermuda by Tuesday, probably as a category 3 storm, and she will appear to be heading for the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

As you can see, that is as close as she gets to land. By Wednesday, Katia will be picked up by the prevailing west winds of the jet stream and get pushed way out to sea. Our only side effects will be increased surf and rip tides all week as Katia stirs up the ocean. A near hit but we come out unscathed with this storm. Of course, there is another developing tropical system just exiting the coast of Africa as we speak. It is the peak of hurricane season for sure. 

In the near future, we can all expect to get very wet over the next few days. Now tropical depression Lee will continue to move northeast over the Tennessee Valley and become extra tropical. He will lose his name but Lee will still have plenty of rain.

By late tonight into tomorrow morning, we should be deep in the rain associated with that slow moving cold front. What's left of Lee will get picked up by this cold front and give us a second good downpour late Tuesday night into Wednesday. All of this rain and instability will be slow to move out of here as well. Expect tomorrow to be pretty much a washout and Wednesday and Thursday to have intermittent showers with some heavy downpours mixed in.

All in all, a pretty crappy week. Enjoy it!!