Hurricane Arthur

Mike Johnston

EF5
Joined
Feb 14, 2005
Messages
878
Location
Charleston, South Carolina
Now that Arthur has been upgraded to hurricane status, I suppose it's proper to start a thread, if only for posterity's sake. Impact has been very limited here in Charleston, SC. We've had one spiral band, which moved onshore very early this a.m. with some thunder. A few leaves blown down, but no real wind damage. Strong rip currents at the beaches, so no one is out swimming in the surf. Probably the Outer Banks of N.C. will get the worst of it. I'm not worried about the permanent residents there, as they are a hardy people who have been through plenty of hurricanes. But, being a holiday weekend, there will be plenty of visitors to the island, which may make any evacuation a bit chaotic.
 
The strongest winds might stay just offshore, or perhaps just nick the tip of cape Hatteras. The very tip of the outer banks is the only reasonable chasing play here, and its often not possible to get on that strip of land with evacuations in place.
 
I've been following the NHC's coverage of this storm and, being a bit new to the tropical end of things, I'm intensely curious about the overland (well, over-water) speed that Arthur is expected to gain after it's done in North Carolina. It seems it'll be due to interaction with a large eastward-moving cold front; after having taken several days to get from Florida to South/North Carolina, the circulation is expected to suddenly accelerate and get from North Carolina to the vicinity of Nova Scotia in about 36 hours' time; that's interesting.
 
That is very common when a storm is recurving north along the eastern seaboard. Indeed, it is very rare for a storm at those latitudes to be doing anything other that booking it to the northeast(Sandy is and will be the classic example of the exception). Forward speeds of 50kts are not even that unusual as these storms start to get caught up in the mid-latitude westerlies and hightail it up towards Cape Code, Nova Scotia, and ultimately the deep Atlantic.

Anyway, the satellite presentation has essentially collapsed over the last 4 or 5 hours, and the right side eyewall remains offshore and might not even impact Hatteras at all. Plus the best part of the show at night... Glad I didnt pull the trigger and go after this one.
 
The storm seems to have jogged. On the local NWS Doppler the eye appears to be entirely within Pamlico Sound. Hatteras looks to be getting a raking. Eyewall winds at 90+.
 
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