Friday Tropical Update: Jose Flirting With Northeast

Good morning. Well as I mentioned Monday, I would keep you posted if anything evolved with tropical storm/hurricane Jose and it has. Most of the model consensus has come into agreement that this storm will come very close to the east coast early next week. The exact details differ as always but its a threat that needs to be watched.

Currently Jose is a tropical storm but will strengthen back to a Cat 1 and possibly Cat 2 hurricane....

The movement of the storm is being dictated by steering areas of pressure, in particular an area of high pressure to its east...

Earlier in the week the models had this storm turning north then making a sharper turn to the north east. Since then things have changed due to a blocking area of high pressure to Jose's north strengthening on the models. Below shows this trend. Keep an eye on how the placement and strength of that high pressure area to Jose's northeast changes on the image below...

Notice on the last few frames (recent model runs) the area of high pressure becomes larger and further southwest. This blocks Jose and prevents the storm from just moving directly out to sea. I am confident at this time the storm gets blocked, its just a matter of how close to the coast does this get.

The GFS model is the most aggressive and has a Cat 1 Hurricane tucked right into the Mid-Atlantic...

The European is more offshore and flirts with eastern New England...

Both scenarios are very plausible and it will will depend on how strong that block or area of high pressure is I showed you before. If the polar jet stream decides to get too active, it will break down that block and the storm is allowed to escape easier.

At this time I am favoring a solution more towards the European which shows a close call type scenario. If a solution like the GFS verifies then we would have a much bigger problem on our hands.

Stay tuned, daily updates to come.