By: Lead Forecaster Daniel Crawley
Good Friday afternoon,
We are closely monitoring a system that is developing near Cuba, the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands that may impact the Southeast US next week.
Invest 94L was designated a couple days ago and a weak surface low is noted as of this afternoon off the eastern tip of Cuba. This feature has been sitting over Hispanola the past two days which has kept it from already developing but that is expected to change in the next 24 hours.
The thought process is that 94L will eventually form into our next named system “Imelda” (ee-MEHL-dah) by the end of this weekend. Imelda will gradually intensify as it moves northwest and by Tuesday could be sitting just off the South Carolina Coastline.
The steering flow across North America is also quite complex as you have an upper low situated in the Deep South, Humberto to the east passing close to Bermuda and a blocking ridge to the north and northeast of both Imelda and Humberto. There is a competition going on as to what ultimately guides Imelda with It appearing the upper low will take over and bring the storm inland at varying speeds based on which model you trust.
All of this leads to a low-confidence forecast at this time with Imelda. Regardless, impacts of Imelda could extend inland at some point next week including for us here in western North Carolina. The GFS model for example brings Imelda on shore near Charleston as a Hurricane on Tuesday and places the remnant low over Upstate South Carolina by early Wednesday. That could deliver the potential for locally heavy rains to enter into our region. In contrast, the European model wants to slowly stall out Imelda somewhere near the Charleston SC area by Tuesday meaning different impacts for us locally.
So as of this afternoon, our best advise for those in the western Carolinas is to be vigilant and keep an eye on updated forecasts through the weekend. Also, some preliminary precautions that you may need to do in order to protect property should be done this weekend in the event that we see either heavy rainfall or gusty winds next week.
We are hoping once a more defined surface low develops that the timing issues between all the guidance will become resolved.
Foothills Weather Network will be on top of this and will have another full briefing tomorrow. Stay #WeatherAware!