Nicole Still On Track To Really Slap Florida And Soak Us Here In Vermont

Tropical Storm Nicole looking a little ragged in this
satellite photo from this morning, but still also looking
powerful and large on approach to Florida. 

 Since yesterday, there have only been small adjustments to the future of Tropical Storm Nicole and how it will affect Florida, the Southeast, and eventually, us here in the Northeast. 

Nicole is still expected to come ashore tonight somewhere on the central east coast of Florida, but just a tad south of what its expected landfall had been with yesterday's forecast.

It will still be a borderline tropical storm/hurricane when it does hit late tonight, but that doesn't matter so much. 

It's causing nasty storm surges that will surely damage much of the east coast of Florida.

When Hurricane Ian crossed the state of Florida in late September, the worst of that storm surge was in southwestern Florida. Still, Ian caused a lot of coastal erosion and flooding on the state's east coast. And that damage has not really been repaired yet. 

Even though Nicole won't be the most powerful hurricane ever to hit Florida - not by a long shot - its timing will make it worse than it would otherwise be.

It'll worsen the damage caused by Ian. Plus, Nicole is hitting when the high tides are already a little higher than normal due to the moon phases.

It's also striking that Nicole is so large.  Tropical storm force winds early this morning extended out as much as 460 miles from the storm's center, especially to the north of it.

Tropical storm force winds and battering waves have already been hitting the east coast of Florida since yesterday. 

Although Nicole will weaken as it crosses Florida tomorrow, it will still bring flooding and high winds. 

The storm is then expected to turn northeastward, and hook up with a dynamic cold front associated with a large storm in the northern Plains. 

Nicole, or the remains of it anyway, will bring a huge slug of tropical moisture and warmth into the Northeast, including Vermont.

Exactly where the heaviest rain will fall is still a bit of an open question.

Overall, the forecast path of Nicole's remains has shifted westward since yesterday. It's now expected to go up through the Appalachians and not along or off the coast as earlier thought. That takes the heaviest rain over interior Pennsylvania, New York and northwestern Vermont.

Well, that's the snapshot forecast, anyway.   Weather forecasting computer models in this situation, two or three days before the event, do what I like to say is windshield wiper-ing. 

It's going to go west! No, east!,  Wait, back to the west! 

So we'll just need to wait a couple days to see where the heaviest rain sets up.

That said, we're still not expecting anything super awful, even if the heaviest rain goes through Vermont.  Worst case scenario, at least at this point, is some minor flooding along a few main rivers, some local flash flooding in poor drainage areas and brooks, some washouts on some steep dirt roads, maybe a culvert problem or two.

In other words, take the risk of heavy Vermont rain seriously, but there's no sense of dread here. 

By the way Nicole, and the anticipated heavy rain in parts of the eastern United States is part of a temporarily very busy weather pattern.

A blizzard warning is up for parts of North and South Dakota tomorrow. That blizzard warning is surrounded by a fairly expansive winter storm warning. 

A couple feet of snow fell in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California over the past couple of days, which is actually a good thing. They need a long winter of heavy snows, so this is a decent start. 

Speaking of decent, some pretty good rains fell on low elevations in most of California in the past few days, effective ending the wildfire season, except in far southern parts of the state.