East Coast Braces For Big Storm, Major Coastal Damage; Effects On Vermont Still Questionable

The developing storm, seen on this morning's satellite
imagery, was centered off the coast of Georgia
and had an expanding shield of clouds. Pretty
much the entire Eastern Seaboard will be hit
with storm surges and damaging waves. 

The East Coast is, as we mentioned yesterday, bracing itself for a humdinger of a storm, and I'm sure you'll see a lot of news and social media videos of giant waves crashing into comparatively tiny beaches, vacation homes and tourist businesses. 

The worst of it will come in starting with this evening's tides, and ramping up to its worst rampage Sunday and Monday. Sand dunes that protect property and roads will get flattened by the waves in spots, and beaches will erode away. 

Out on Cape Hatteras, the tide will be two to four above normal later today and tonight, according to forecast. Large waves of eight to 12 feet are likely, so I imagine more houses will fall into the ocean. 

In places like Delaware, the Virginia Tidewater and the Jersey Shore, residents are also bracing for huge waves, and tidal flooding. There might be some evacuations, and shoreline homes and businesses could easily be damaged.

Tide level at Cape May, New Jersey might be as high or higher than in the 2012 Superstorm Sandy.  The tide at Atlantic City could be among the top ten on record.

New Jersey had declared a state of emergency in anticipation of the storm.

 Long Island is bracing for similar bad weather, with flooding of shoreline homes and businesses expected there, too. A lot of roads will also be closed. Businesses and homeowners were moving possessions to higher ground or upper floors as the storm approached. The Riverhead Country Fair on Long Island, an extremely popular event out there, has been canceled this weekend. 

 This storm is going to be a lot like a hurricane sweeping up the East Coast, only it's not a hurricane. Just a regular old storm joining forces with a strong high pressure system to its north to shove water inland where it doesn't belong. 

The pressure difference between the storm and the high to the north will create coastal winds gusting to 60 mph or more. That long fetch of east winds over the Atlantic will shove a lot of water onto the Eastern Seaboard, which is why everybody is expecting such destructive storm surges this weekend. 

It's going to be one memorable storm for many along the coast. It won't rise to the level of the famous "Perfect Storm" of 1991, but it will be something. 

We also can't ignore the fact that sea levels are gradually creeping up, year after year, thanks to climate change. A storm of this magnitude would have caused a lot of damage a half century ago, but not quite as much as this storm, as the water is starting from a slightly higher level than it would have back then.

The damage will also be much worse than it would have been back in 1970s or 1980s because a lot more houses, businesses, condos, resorts, gift shops, honky tonks and gawd knows what else has been built along the shore since then. If you've got more stuff in the way, more stuff is going to get knocked over. Or at least soaked with sea water. 

Expect more and more of this kind of mess as we go through the coming years and decades.

VERMONT EFFECTS

Rainfall prediction map for this upcoming nor'easter
in and around Vermont. Up to an inch could fall in 
far southern Vermont with very little up north.
This forecast is very much subject to change. 

The Green Mountain State has no shoreline to flood, of course. Unless you count Lake Champlain, which is so ridiculously low due to drought that a 200 mph wind wouldn't stir up enough waves to cause any damage. (Although, as you might imagine, a 200 mph wind would cause a lot of other problems)!

Don't worry, the wind from this storm will be far less than that. Things could get a little gusty on the western slopes of the southern Green Mountains Sunday night and Monday.  Maybe even enough to knock over a tree or two or snap a power line. 

But Vermont is mostly going to sit out this storm. 

The storm does look like it will come close enough to give some rain to parched southern Vermont. But we don't know how far north that rain will get. 

The strong high pressure over Quebec that will help create the intense east winds and storm tides along the eastern seaboard will block the storm - and its moisture - from coming too far north. Plus the high pressure will feed in some dry air, likely evaporating a lot of the rain that tries to come down from the clouds. 

As of Saturday morning, computer models were still arguing with each other as to how much rain will fall where in Vermont. It's a difficult forecast because somewhere in northern New England, including here in the Green Mountain State, there will probably be a sharp line from decent rains to the south and not much of anything north. 

We don't know exactly where that line will be. Honestly, we probably won't know until the storm makes its closest pass at us Sunday night and Monday. 

So expect adjustments to the forecast. As of this morning, predicted rainfall totals range from near an inch close to the Massachusetts border to just a few raindrops up near the Canadian border.  

Any rain will help, of course. And after the storm goes by, we'll settle into a cooler and cloudier weather pattern than we've had all of this autumn so far. That means the drought won't be able to keep intensifying so fast, and might even level off, if we get showers here and there. 

But as far as any drought-ending downpours and drenching goes, we're still out of luck for now.