After a day and night of torrential rain and flooding in the Northeast, what’s left of Ida is finally moving into the Atlantic. Rain fell at the rate of more than 3 inches per hour during the evening. The National Weather Service issued Flash Flood Emergencies for several locations in New York and New Jersey. Rain amounts shattered records.
Less than two weeks ago on August 21st, New York City set its one-hour rainfall record with 1.94 inches. Last night Ida blew that record away when 3.15 inches fell between 8:51 and 9:51 p.m.
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A feeder band of tropical moisture wrapping into the remnants of the center of Ida, which had merged with a frontal system, combined to make the deluge. The system spun up a huge tornado in southern New Jersey as well.
Ex-Ida is now heading off the New England coast toward Atlantic Canada and out to sea. Some heavy rain is expected in coastal Maine today as the system slides by, but Ida should be history by tomorrow.
It looks like we’re going to get a break from the tropical insanity for a while. It’s dangerous to try to predict what’s going to spin up in the tropics more that 5 or 7 days in the future, but nothing is on the radar right now that might threaten the U.S.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Larry has turned into a hurricane. It’s expected to intensify significantly and grow in size over the next few days. Conveniently, a dip in the jet stream will set up over the East Coast early next week that should deflect Hurricane Larry to the north well offshore of the U.S. coastline.
It might come uncomfortably close to Bermuda and Atlantic Canada, but those appear to be the only land areas threatened. Still, we’ll want to be sure it completes its turn to the north and is heading out to sea about a week from now.
In the Caribbean, the Tropical Disturbance has a very slight chance of developing as it heads toward the Gulf. The computer forecast models track it over the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, so it doesn’t have much of a chance in the short term.
Once it gets over the warm waters of the Gulf next week, we’ll have to keep an eye on it.
Otherwise, long-range computer forecast models are predicting more Saharan dust over the eastern Atlantic. Large, moisture-rich systems like Hurricane Larry can fight it off, but weaker systems are more likely to succumb to the dry air.
No other systems are expected to develop into next week at least.