[Cross-posted from Sullivan’s Travellers.]
The Weather Channel’s harbinger of hurricane-related doom, Jim Cantore, has changed his travel plans, and will be greeting Hurricane Earl from Cape Hatteras instead of Cape Cod. The latest computer model map illustrates why:
The models now universally call for Earl to take a pronounced right turn between 30° N and 40° N; there is no longer even a single reputable model predicting a landfall in New England, or even getting closer than a hundred miles away from Cape Cod and the Islands. All of the models have Earl’s track staying to the “right” of the crucial 40° N 70° W marker.
Hatteras doesn’t look likely to get a direct hit, either, but it’s more likely than Cape Cod, and anyway there’s a decent chance it will be close enough to experience some rough weather. So unless Cantore wants to travel to fair Nova Scotia, the Outer Banks are his best bet for raincoat-blowing-in-the-wind infotainment. (That said, if Earl follows the models that predict a sharper and quicker right turn, Cantore will end up broadcasting live footage of large waves under partly cloudy skies, warning about the dangers of deadly rip currents.)
As for Tropical Storm Fiona, aside from the fact that her name — a replacement for 2004’s retired “Frances,” one of that season’s four landfalling Florida hurricanes — always makes me think of the ogre princess from Shrek, there’s little to say: it appears she will either follow Earl out to sea or die trying. (Fast-moving Fiona is rapidly catching up to Earl, and may be simply torn apart by the more powerful storm’s upper-level outflow.)
The next area worth watching is tropical wave “98L” in the eastern Atlantic, but at least for now, NHC gives it only a 10% chance of becoming T.D. 9 (or T.S. Gaston — two consecutive Disney* cartoon characters!) in the next 48 hours.
By the way, for those keeping score at home, the Atlantic hurricane season reaches its climatological peak in just under two weeks. So all this activity isn’t especially surprising.
*CORRECTION: In comments, JD correctly notes that Fiona is a DreamWorks character, not a Disney character.
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Fiona isn’t a Disney character – Shrek is Dreamworks.
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and Hurrah boys, for Stormchaser Jim Cantore! 🙂 We look forward to viewing him at Hatteras with his Eyes bugging out over the deadly Rip currents. (Also to viewing You, Brendan, with both your Pupils returned to Normal size. 🙂
“…Fiona, aside from the fact that her name…always makes me think of the ogre princess from Shrek…”
So think instead of Gabrielle Anwar as ex-IRA woman Fiona Glennane in Burn Notice. (See, you just need to watch more Educational Television, like yer ould man. 🙂
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