Strong onshore winds and large waves are expected to cause issues from the Carolinas up to New England, as AccuWeather's Geoff Cornish and Anna Azallion explain.
00:00You'll notice we've had a slew of these flood reports. This is because of onshore winds leading to a surge and coastal flooding.
00:09And you can see this area of low pressure beginning to spin up here off of the coast here of the Carolinas and Georgia.
00:16So as we loop the map, I'm going to switch over to the infrared satellite loop.
00:20And we're beginning to see a little bit more in the way of some spin here.
00:24There's flow from the south and southwest. And again, there's a zone of low pressure beginning to get going here that we're going to be watching through the evening and the night as that begins to pull north.
00:34So satellite radar combination, kind of a hybrid look at both the radar and satellite.
00:39The storm's going to be fueled by plenty of moisture. The warmth, the warm water, I should say, is around 80 to 83 degrees.
00:46And the winds have been steadily blowing that warm water into the coastline here, leading to the surge and the coastal flooding.
00:53So when we take a look at the current wind speeds here, 14 mile per hour winds in Charleston, 15 mile per hour winds in rural beach.
00:59But the wave heights, because of the persistent nature of these winds, are already in advance of this storm 10 to 13 feet if you go far enough offshore.
01:07So the wave heights are going to be growing closer to 20 to 25 feet way offshore later in the storm's life cycle.
01:14Now, temperatures are dropping here. You can see some blue on the map.
01:17We're six degrees lower than we were yesterday at this hour in Charleston, South Carolina.
01:21And this is the result of that cold front. Nine degree drop there in Panama City.
01:26So cooler air upstairs is now over some of this warm water.
01:31And that contrast, much colder air over warm water we often see in the wintertime,
01:35help to breed nor'easters and winter storms.
01:38And the upper level disturbance that has drawn this pocket of cool air in will fizzle.
01:43But the coastal low is going to form. Low level circulation around this low pressure system.
01:47Now, the winds we have plotted here are around 20,000 feet up in the atmosphere.
01:51So you can see the steering flow will be shoving this northward up into the eastern part of North Carolina.
01:56So the disturbance, a loft, cool air aloft, encountering warm water.
01:59Storm forms, it pulls north, and that stiff onshore wind becomes greater.
02:04We already have 10 to 13 foot wave heights with winds of 15 miles per hour.
02:08We can double the wind speed tomorrow with sustained winds of 20 to 30 miles per hour in some spots, gusts 30 to 40.
02:15And strong onshore winds will lead to coastal flooding.
02:18So the rain is going to begin to pick up.
02:20Places near Myrtle Beach, you're going to begin to see some rain tomorrow before daybreak.
02:24Raleigh, probably a dry morning, then rain in the afternoon.
02:27And that picks up here.
02:28So the center of circulation is still kind of elongated.
02:31But pooling north east of Myrtle Beach, stiff onshore winds into eastern North Carolina tomorrow night.
02:35And there we are at 11 p.m. with the rain ramping up.
02:38So this storm has no official rating with the traditional hurricane wind scale from Saffir Simpson.
02:44But it's a one on the AccuWeather real impact scale for hurricanes.
02:47And the main driver for this, every storm is different.
02:50The main driver in this case is coastal inundation.
02:53So we're talking about coastal flooding.
02:55And that's going to be the biggest issue here, not just in North Carolina, but all the way up into the northeast, Anna.
03:00Yeah, and the timing really depends on your location.
03:03Like we've been talking about the storm developing now, but we'll start to see those impacts tomorrow for North Carolina.
03:10For the mid-Atlantic, the northeast, it's really Sunday and Monday that we're talking about.
03:14Now, there's a couple factors, though, that are going to worsen conditions in the mid-Atlantic and the northeast.
03:20One of these has to do with what I'm showing you here with the atmospheric conditions.
03:24So, first of all, some of the factors that led to our storm system developing off the Atlantic also created this dip in the jet stream.
03:30That is the steering flow for this storm.
03:33It's the reason that it's going to be moving from south to north.
03:36Then we have another area of low pressure here.
03:38This one north of Michigan, it's really just bringing some showers to the Great Lakes region.
03:43Not that big a deal.
03:44However, as it moves south and east, well, it interacts with our other area of low pressure and actually acts to strengthen it.
03:52But the other thing going on is we have an area of high pressure to the north.
03:56And the thing that happens when we have high pressure and low pressure relatively close to each other, there's a tight pressure gradient.
04:02All this means, really, is that we have a wind tunnel increasing that onshore flow in the areas highlighted in purple here on this map.
04:10What this means for you and the impacts is that in those areas, really stretching from New Jersey down through Virginia Beach, that's where some of our worst conditions are going to be.
04:20It's where we're more likely along the coast to have a wind gust up to 80 miles per hour, which already 40 to 60.
04:27Think about that like a severe thunderstorm.
04:30You get some tree limbs down.
04:31You get some power lines down.
04:33You get some power outages.
04:34Even stronger wind gusts, a little bit more of an impact as far as possible damage.
04:40Just like Jeff was saying, though, the coastal inundation, that is the focus.
04:44If you walk away from this thinking that storm is going to do what?
04:47The one thing to remember, the storm is going to cause coastal flooding.
04:50Widespread one to three.
04:51However, from specifically Tom's River down through Virginia Beach, that's where the worst of the coastal flooding is likely to be.
04:58Again, it's where we likely get closer to our active weather local storm acts of six feet of coastal inundation.
05:05That translates to coastal flooding likely on some roads flooded for days, which already a reminder, you don't want to try to drive through any flooded roadways.
05:14That causes some headaches.
05:16It can cause some damage to building structures, depending on exactly where we see this flooding.
05:20That's not all, though.
05:22Really, we're looking at high tide levels.
05:24So, looking at Atlantic City, this is one of the areas we think some of the worst impacts are going to be.
05:28This is timed out with the timing of our high tides.
05:31So, Sunday into Monday, we start to get these tides going well above our typical high tide, which is already about two and a half feet.
05:38But then we get closer to five to six.
05:40Well, we're adding on another foot to two feet of water beyond what we typically see.
05:47That's why we're talking about that coastal flooding.
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