AccuWeather's Geoff Cornish explains all of the factors leading to the severity of effects expected from an ongoing tropical wind and rainstorm.

Boston

Meteorologists are tracking a high-impact storm system affecting the US East Coast, which is causing coastal flooding in several areas. The storm, while not officially classified as a tropical system, is bringing strong onshore winds and heavy rain, particularly north of its center, resulting in ocean water being pushed inland.

The situation is compounded by a strong high pressure system over eastern Canada, creating a tight pressure gradient that intensifies the flooding risk. Forecast models show some variation in the storm's progression, but most predict significant onshore winds and rain for regions such as New Jersey and New York City. Storm surge is expected to reach one to three feet in many areas, with some locations potentially seeing higher levels. Authorities are closely monitoring the evolving conditions and model projections.

What's causing the coastal flooding along the East Coast?

Well, we do have a lot to talk about with a high impact weekend storm. I want to show you some of the factors at play that will be driving the coastal flooding that makes this storm a one on the AccuWeather Real Impact Scale for hurricanes. It may not officially be technically a tropical system in terms of meeting the definition for a named storm within the government's eyes, but it's about the impacts that we're concerned about. That's what we're calling a tropical rain and wind storm, and it will eventually take on some quasi-tropical characteristics later in the storm's life cycle. But right now, as we take a look at the big picture here, we have the formation factors. There's a big puddle of cool air under this upper level low pressure system, and the water temps just off to the east side of Florida are 81, 82, 83 degrees. So it's this puddle of cool air with this big dip in the jet stream slides east. It begins to camp out over that warm water, and under that, we get this little low pressure system to begin to spin up, and it becomes a much more impactful storm. So this is going to ramp up here, and by Saturday night, low level wind circulation will be like this. Here you can see the wind at about 20,000 feet. Those winds are going to be driving the storm, the steering influences will be driving it northward here into the Outer Banks. So big picture, here is our AccuWeather tropical eyepath for this storm, and we're very concerned because this is going to be taking its good old time pulling north. Saturday afternoon and evening, Sunday afternoon and evening, Monday afternoon and evening. Anytime you're north of the center of this storm, anybody north of the center of this storm, you're going to have that strong onshore wind, which is going to be driving ocean water inland, and that's going to be producing coastal flooding. So again, anybody north of the center of this storm, you're facing that onshore wind. As we ramp up here, Saturday, gusts of 30 to 40 miles per hour. Today we've had gusts even before the storm forms, over 20 to 30 miles per hour farther south, but tomorrow this begins to ramp up late Saturday. The big driver here is the coastal storm, our tropical rain and wind storm, but there's also a massive factor at play in the form of a strong high pressure system over eastern Canada. These systems are working in tandem with one another, a tight pressure gradient driving this problem, major problems here with coastal flooding. Let's look at the models here, and this forecast here, the GFS, I wanted to point out, we have another player on the field, here's your upper level low, that's the big driver in getting this going, but there's also this other pesky system crossing the Great Lakes, and the interaction between that system and the coastal low will dictate how Sunday shapes up. Now the GFS model, this is the American model, this is a little more aligned with most computer models out there, and this is the main, among two examples I'm going to show you, this aligns pretty well with our forecast here. Sunday night and Monday, you can still see that interaction between the two, it's kind of an elongated, stretched out zone here, but the coastal storm at the surface will be spinning its wheels east of Virginia, and that Great Lakes low interacts with the trough, and the longwave trough, the big trough across the east coast, in such a way that it will ultimately strengthen the storm system, but also probably hold it back a little bit in terms of longitude, keeping it near the coast for a time, and then a chunk of energy rotates around the base of it, and it carries it out to sea. Now the European model is a bit different. You can see there's a break here within the thickness lines here, they don't quite connect here Sunday morning, like they do in the GFS. So the storms are a little more separate for longer, even into Sunday, so that plays a role in the European depiction of events, keeping this a little more separate, and ultimately that impacts Sunday. So Sunday, here's the GFS model. We think this is the most likely scenario, and this aligns pretty well with our forecast. Strong onshore winds, rain in New York City and so forth, but take a look at the European at the same time. Not even raining in New York City, because these two surface low pressure systems are actually separate. They're not really consolidated into one as cohesively. So we need to keep an eye on this as a potential, but even if the European is right, it backs rain into Long Island and New York City late Monday, and then Tuesday morning, while the GFS is winding down, the European is still fairly strong just off the Jersey Shore, and then it eventually goes out to sea. So it's kind of an interesting scenario that there are still a few questions, when we're honest about this, on the table about how Sunday night and Monday play out. Significant wave heights. This is the WaveWatch model. I just wanted to briefly show you some areas with 20 plus foot wave heights off the Jersey Shore. That's a big deal out there. And again, that's offshore. Now as we bring it back to the models, Rebecca, away from the models, to our forecast, again, we can't just show you models and say, well, this is what one model says, this is what another says. Have a great night. We have to make an actual forecast, and we're hedging toward this, again, the storm hugging near the coast, strong onshore winds, and rain. We're likely to see rain in New Jersey and even in New York City on Sunday evening. We're hedging toward that first depiction that I showed you. We have a storm surge of one to three feet in many areas, but I do want to point out our AccuWeather local storm maps. It's conceivably, in an extreme case, somebody out there could see a potential surge of more than three or four, maybe even more than five feet. It's more likely that most of us see one to three foot storm surge. But somebody out there, like Lewis, Delaware, here's a candidate for more than three foot storm surge. This is based on NOAA. It's an experimental product that's been around since the late 90s, improved slightly since then. But NOAA has an extra tropical storm surge model. That's what they call it. And the light blue is your typical high tide based on the moon's influence of around two and a half feet in Lewis, Delaware. Look at this model's projection. That is more than four feet. That's actually four and a half feet above the typical tide because of massive, massive flooding from that onshore wind. That would be Sunday midday and then Sunday midnight to the early morning hours of Monday morning. So those are some concerns that we're tracking. Coastal flooding with our forecast feed.

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