Last night’s models completely changed the long range forecast path of Hurricane Matthew. The GFS now has Matthew completely blocked from leaving the coastal areas of Florida. It has the hurricane lingering and circling back onto the coast of Florida with no movement up the coast of the SE US.
Not sure if this is modeling error, or a new trend. If real, this could mean serious problems for areas of Florida.
For us, it looks like the hurricane will not be a consideration for the coming weekend, although some moisture may be tapped to increase rainfall with a frontal passage late Saturday.
The latest computer models show a more westward track for Hurricane Matthew, either hugging the coast of Florida, or with the Navy NAVGEM model, actually moving over Florida.
The models also show a slower progression of the storm northward, very bad for the US SE coastline and Florida, but potentially sparing our area from the storm.
With a slower moving storm, an upper air trough and cold front may sweep this out to sea after the storm passes the outer banks of NC. Timing of both features will be everything.
Another tropical storm, Nicole, has formed east of Hurricane Matthew. This will increase the challenge and complexity of the computer modeling of Matthew.
A very serious situation exists for the Caribbean, as Hurricane Matthew has intensified into a Category 4 storm.
As mentioned over a week ago, this storm formation has been relatively well-predicted by the models for almost two weeks, which is very impressive. When it comes to hurricanes, details such as speed and direction of movement have enough variations; when incorporated in the global forecast models, it’s creates havoc with a dependable deterministic forecast.
The blocked pattern in the northern Atlantic appears to be re-establishing itself, which would cause Matthew to veer towards the US. east coast. The potential of a blocking setup was depicted by the GFS model for well over a week.
That said, except for intensification, the storm’s general path has been relatively close to the one predicted, except the timing has been slower by several days. The current GFS takes the storm into the SE coastline of the US later this week and it might affect us next Saturday. Stay tuned.
