downeastnc

12Z Icon and GFS pretty much the same as the last 8 times they have ran it....

NAM 3k much closer to GFS/ICON than the 12/32k Nam's...also its the NAM's

If you stay be prepared to have no utilities those last 2 days, and that's assuming you can leave, Hwy 64 might be blocked by water and trees for a few days after the storm....the other side to this is what if it pulls a Bertha or Fran or even Irene and hits a pressure drop the last 12 hrs and instead of a weakening storm you have a strengthening wind field around the core...just be prepared to be there for more than the couple of days without power etc.

We have a few more days for the models to iron out the details as far as NC goes......intensity forecasting is hit and miss but its hard to see how its more than a Cat 2 up this way....exact track will as usual be very important to who see's what effects especially away from the coast.....the Euro and Ukie are the farthest east but they are also very strong with the storm and the ICON and GFS which is weaker with the storm are west just inshore along the NC coast.....for SC it looks likely that most of the coastal counties will experience at least gust to hurricane force.

GFS first landfall over Cape Fear Hr 69 looks to go into Onslow Bay and then landfall again over MHX/Lookout and ride right up Shackleford Banks to Hatteras.

latest ICON still hitting in same spot, been 10 miles either side of this point for a bunch of runs now...given the size and strength the winds on the wind map seem fairly reasonable maybe knock 10 mph off them to be safe...

Yeah that gets the eastern half of the state pretty good if its got a big wind field...probably strong TS gust from the Triangle to I-95 and cane gust from there to the coast....even you might get decent TS gust in Eno on that track....

Yeah the Tropical forum thread is a disaster....usually is. In the short term I think the thing to look for is how fast or slow Dorian takes reaching 28N....that about 100 miles from the current location of the center, current track says it wont get there for roughly 30 hrs....that means over the next 30 hrs this storm is not going to move more than 100 miles.....if it does move faster than that then the door opens for a more direct hit on NC.....

12 hrs difference in timing or the ridge to the east of the storm being taller or shorter etc will all matter a lot to NC.....as usual lol.

New Ukie pretty bad for NC, if those pressures are right its still a strong storm clips Cape Fear then over Emerald Isle and Bogue Banks into the Pamlico then across the OBX over Hatteras...50 miles left of that and interior NC gets hammered 50 miles to the east and they dont feel a thing....

Ukie has it right at 940 at landfall over MHX then into the Pamlico and across the OBX.....if this track is anymore NE instead of ENE it would be a horrible hit for NC surge wise this track is bad for the rivers and southern beaches......

For folks west of I-95 this needs to at least come in at ILM I would think moving NNE or at least NE....all the models have a wind max on the west side under the heavy rain shield so usually on these tracks there is a inland area that see's a wind max that is usually more violent downdraft type winds, so the sustained winds might only be 20--25 but you get the big rolling gust well into the 50-70 range.... The GFS has up to 75knt winds at 925 MB which wont be that high up over a lot of central and eastern NC so gust to 50-70 at the surface is reasonable even as far inland as the Triangle on the GFS track...the GFS is also the weakest with the storm pressure wise.

this guy is ready

00Z GFS and ICON hold serve on eastern NC landfall....ICON much stronger though with a bigger wind field, much of NC east of US 1 gets strong TS conditions with gust well into the 70-80 mph range east of I-95....80-100 mph gust along the IBX/OBX, would be a solid hit for NC.

If Dorian is going to put the western eyewall on land in FL it appears the models wanna do it around Cape Canaveral.....not sure how much weight I would put on the Hi Res models...

RDU write up 9pm tonight Wednesday night into Friday: Impact from Hurricane Dorian will increase across (at least) eastern portions of central NC by Wednesday night as the hurricane lifts north/northeastward along the GA/SC coast. Heavy rain and gusty winds will be possible. Despite around 6 to 12 hour timing differences in the latest operational GFS/ECMWF we expect the most significant impacts on Thursday into Thursday night. While there is still some uncertainty in the track of the hurricane as it approaches our latitude (until we start to see the turn northward and increase in forward speed on Monday into Tuesday). However, the continued run to run continuity over the last several days of both the ECMWF and GFS is leading to increasing confidence of at least eastern NC (generally to the east of the US 1 corridor) will see tropical storm force wind gusts and heavy rain (resulting in flash flooding potential, especially in the far east). As the hurricane weakens as it moves northward and near our coastline we will likely see the wind field expand. This will likely result in tropical storm force wind gusts spreading across (at least) eastern portion of the area, as mentioned above. It is possible to see wind gusts in the 60+ mph range across our far eastern/southeastern counties.

Timing wise the GFS is fastest and would have the center knocking on the door by 9am Thur morning...thats only 3.5 days out at this point....so there is not that much time left even the slower Euro is hitting by Thur night. By this time if your not ready in SC/NC its too late really...9am Thur morning

18Z GFS and ICON have ILM to MHX landfall then up over the Pamlico to Hatteras......

That pressure on Euro does not automatically equal Cat 4 up this way it really depends on a lot of factors, however I imagine by then the wind field will be huge with hurricane winds well out for the center in gust....NHC has it dropping from 105 south of NC to 95 NE of NC....but they barely keep the center offshore it looks like.... Here is the NHC disco of Irene a few hrs after landfall while she was over the Pamlico Sound with winds of around 80-85 MPH and a pressure of 950 MB...... THE CENTER OF IRENE HAS BEEN MOVING ACROSS EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA THIS AFTERNOON...AND THE RADAR PRESENTATION OF THE INNER CORE ACTUALLY IMPROVED FOR A FEW HOURS. SINCE THAT TIME...THE RAGGED EYE HAS FILLED IN BUT THE CENTER REMAINS WELL DEFINED ON RADAR...WHICH WARRANTS A RETURN TO TWO-HOURLY INTERMEDIATE ADVISORIES. AN AIR FORCE RESERVE HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT REPORTED PEAK FLIGHT-LEVEL WINDS OF 85-90 KT TO THE EAST OF THE CENTER DURING THE PAST FEW HOURS...AND A VERY RECENT CENTER DROP MEASURED A MINIMUM PRESSURE OF 950 MB.

Those kind of winds though are limited to a small area, maybe 10-15 miles thick in the inner eyewall...as bad as this storm is hurricane force winds only extend out 40-50 miles from the center.....

ICON finally caved to the Euro/GFS with the turn off Fl and movement up the east coast offshore.....then it does this..... 12Z GFS also hits this looks like mid to late Thursday so 4 days from now....starting to think I might get some decent winds here luckily it looks Cat1 weak Cat 2 at worse....

There is no signs of a ERC happening anytime soon, the storm is pretty annular so i wouldn't think one would happen in the next 12-24 hrs but you never know.....pressure down to 910 or so once the winds catch up this will be the strongest ATL hurricane ever recorded of there is a plane out to sample it when it peaks.

GFS back to a NC hit...at least for this run

The 120 hr plot of the Euro/GFS/GFS legacy are pretty clustered....if they all wrong they are all wrong together....

The real difference will be speed, typically they slow down to turn as sharp as the models have Dorian doing.....if the ridge erodes too fast it will stall and then move north once the western ridge builds in, there will also be a ridge forming to his east combined this will get him moving north....now if the ridge he is under now is a bit stronger and the ridge out west a bit faster the almost stall wont happen or last as long.....those runs were he does not slow as much are the ones that end up over eastern NC, faster means further north before the NE turn....if he sits in the north Bahamas for 24-36 hrs before moving north then its more likely he wont be able to get far enough north to get onshore before moving east, then again if the ridge to his east is taller then he wont be able to turn east as soon....these are all things that will determine where he ends up going and the models do not have the skill to get that right down to 50-100 miles in the 4-5 day range....this will come down to Monday, if by Monday the models all still have him hitting or just off the coast of SC/NC then chances are we have to deal with a hit at least a near enough miss to bring strong TS conditions on the coast....if not actual hurricane conditions even inland....it would take the models all going well OTS 150 miles off the coast for me to buy into the its a miss scenario before then. Kinda like snow storms, once they trend NW of you they rarely trend back S, same with canes once they are modeled to miss well east they almost never trend back west.... Even if its suppose to come into SC/NC in the 24-48 hr time frame those little impossible to model wobbles etc in the last 12-24 hrs can really move the LF point around...