Irene Stays Scary… Though There Are A Few Possible Outs!

That lowers the bar for flooding and makes downed trees and powerlines more likely.

I have a few minutes here. I have written a hurricane story for our 4:00 PM newscast. I’ll also be answering a few viewer questions on-the-air.

The forecast for Hurricane Irene continues to be a scary one. There is no doubt someone is going to get blasted by this storm. However, like anything else having to do with real estate the three most important factors are:

  • Location
  • Location
  • Location

I’m mentioning that because the ECMWF model which I’ve referred to the past few days has moved slightly west again. Moving west means moving inland earlier, losing some windspeed earlier and being a little farther from Connecticut.

That’s the ECMWF. It is one of many possible solutions. The official Hurricane Center track is east of that (and what I’m showing on above).

NHC takes Irene over Kennedy Airport, Port Washington and then across Long Island Sound to Greenwich and Danbury–a much scarier track for Connecticut!

It still looks like rain for Saturday, then heavy tropical squalls and building wind Sunday. The GFS is still calling for parts of our area to get 8″ (give or take) of rain.

Winds will surely be gale to tropical storm force and possibly hurricane force. Even gale force winds will do lots of damage.

The ground in Connecticut (especially Western Connecticut) is near saturation. That lowers the bar for flooding and makes downed trees and powerlines more likely.

At this point the chance of this storm heavily impacting Connecticut is too high to disregard. Now’s the time to begin your preps. Make sure you have everything you’ll need if the state shuts down for a few days or your house loses electricity.

Is it possible I’m wrong? Absolutely. A western swing into Pennsylvania would mean a stormy Sunday, but not horrifically so. A damaging blow from Hurricane Irene (more than Gloria, less than 1938) is much more likely and what I’m keeping in my mind.

I’ll update the blog later tonight.

7 thoughts on “Irene Stays Scary… Though There Are A Few Possible Outs!”

  1. Nice work Geoff and thanks for the update. We know you are running around as a very busy man and it will stay that way for the next few days!

    Mike

  2. FYI, no stores seem to have D batteries left, but we were able to order plenty via Amazon.com for overnight delivery! Yippee!

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