Sunday Morning Update: Storm Is Not On Track!

Good morning. Big news this morning and that news is that this storm will stay more east than previously projected by every major weather model. What does this mean? Well for one it means I was WRONG and two it means that the only impacts that will be witnessed is high surf at the beaches. There will still be beach erosion and some gusty winds but the rain and real heavy rain are for the fishes. This is great news for the Jersey shore and it also  shows you how even in the year 2016 our handle on mother nature is not ultimate. Regardless of how many supercomputers or complex algorithms we may have, the weather will always be a massively complex set of moving variables that are hard to tame.

I will say, this storm still may have a few tricks up its sleeve so I will keep a close on on this today and see if by tonight we can put the final nail in the coffin. Expect a quick note tonight.

The goal of this blog always was to provide a perspective and also take a stance on making a forecast. Its always a fine line between jumping the gun too early and waiting too late where I am just now casting. In this case, the evidence and observations we had to work with overwhelmingly where enough to cause concern. The curve ball came last night with all major guidance shifting east. 

Regardless, this all doesn't change the fact I was incorrect in my assessment of this situation. If I had to do it over again though, I do not know if I would have waited and held back. We saw how impressive Hermine was and the real potential this had to cause havoc along the immediate coast line. The weather outlets picked up on this big time yesterday.  Maybe next time I will go into more depth on what would have to change for the storm to not unfold.

So we move on now to evaluate and see what the rest of hurricane season has in store. Signs are that it will stay active. We also will start looking towards Winter 2017! I am releasing my outlook around October 15th this year. I hope everyone is looking forward to that. Lets hope that if we do see any big storms that I am able to guide everyone in the right direction and make more of an accurate assessment in advance!

Oh wait I forgot, the updated forecast map...

Joking aside, there still will be very high surf, some gusty winds and the beaches still will see some erosion. 


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So what went wrong?

Despite the fact we had powerful high pressure in place to block this storm, the dynamics behind an approaching low pressure system at 18k feet in the atmosphere did not unfold. What I mean by this is that the upper level low was not as strong as modeled and as a result did not have the impact of capturing this storm in time and pulling it back to the coast. Instead, it just will slow the storm down a little but not have the power to turn it back east enough.

The result will be a storm that sit more offshore for a few days...

Still very close for comfort. Those are tropical storm force winds just offshore but it does look like this will not back east enough to cause the disaster scenario. Just very high surf and battered beaches. 

Thats all for now, thanks for following this week guys.