Hanna could strike New England

As Hanna continues to hover over the Bahamas, now finally moving north around 10mph, it continues to be affected by strong westerly shear. Its inner core is not very organized at all, and some time will be required to repair its core, and began intensification. As it is finally moving away from Hispanoila, and remains over warm waters plus shear will be lessening through the next 36 hours, intensification should initiate tomorrow night in accordance with the diurnal convective max. It looks like Hanna could still regain hurricane strength, but any previous thoughts on a possible major hurricane strike are over with. In addition to these changes in the intensity forecast, the model track guidance continues to shift to the east, as the timing of the storm pushes a little later, allowing for the next short wave in line to be further east.



At this point it looks like Hanna will strike along the North Carolina coast, move inland and then east, briefly crossing the water south of Long Island, followed by landfall over Cape Cod. However, Hanna will likely have transitioned to an extratropical storm as it interacts with the short wave. Some of you may remember hurricane Floyd in 1999. It did not strike the northeast as a hurricane, however it dumped tremendous amounts of rain causing significant flooding all along the east coast up through New England. The track of the storm is about as far as similarities go however. I do not anticipate a flooding event even close to the magnitude of Floyd. Here is the latest HPC 5-day QPF outlook. It paints a nice stripe of 3 to 5 inches up through southeast New England. HPC guidance is usually a little overdone, however the 12z GFS draws a similar picture and with the rainfall max further west. In fact, it dumps 4 inches over Keene, with a max of up to 6 further south. Looking at the past model runs, the GFS has trended wetter but kept the general forecast steady. Right now, I think that the a general compromise in terms of location between the GFS and HPC forecasts works well, with the axis of heaviest rainfall from NW Connecticut up through SE New Hampshire. I think the maximum rainfall totals in these areas will be around 4 inches. In Keene, it looks like a quick 1 to 2 inches is possible Saturday through Saturday Night.