Since this morning hurricane Florence has undergone significant strengthening. Florence has gone from a category 2 early this morning to currently a cat 4. This highest rating for hurricanes is cat 5.

The above graphic shows the five day forecast for the hurricane. As you can see the storm will stay to the south of western New Jersey. Once the storm makes landfall, or comes close the Carolina coast, steering winds will become weak so the future path of the storm is not carved in stone.

The above map shows the probabilities of an area seeing tropical storm winds. As you can see northern NJ does not have a color and southern NJ is dark green – with only a 5-10 % chance. This is until Saturday morning

The above map show the *earliest* reasonable arrival time of tropical storm force winds if they occur. Again northern NJ is not in the cone and southern NJ is Thursday afternoon. But keep in mind the other map that we only have a small chance of seeing winds this strong.

Even though the storm will be to our south, the component that is steering the storm to our south may also give us some winds. The combination of strong high pressure north of the storm and the hurricane will setup a pressure gradient, even quite a distance away from the storm. Where this sets up needs to be monitored.

Now looking only at hurricane force wind speeds, the probabilities are outlined in the above map.

The right front side of a storm typically sees not only the strongest winds but also a large amount of rain. In this case the winds will be blowing up against the Appalachian mountains. This will “wring out” even more rain from the hurricane. The above map shows the potential rainfall for days 4 and 5 from now.

Here is the day 6 and 7 forecast for rainfall. Needless to say a huge amount of inland flooding may occur over parts of North Carolina and the Virginia’s

we will continue to monitor the storm and report on it as we are able.