Ready for a REAL taste of fall? It's here.... and It's going to stick around for quite awhile. A large mass of cool air continues to work its way into West Tennessee this morning behind yesterday's cold front. That means temperatures today will be getting into the upper 50's across the region. By the time we get to late tonight and early tomorrow morning we'll be talking about mid to upper 30's for lows. Bundle up! High pressure will keep this cooler air locked in place through the week and sunshine will be plentiful as it has been in most places today. We'll need to watch for some frost in areas during the mornings starting on Monday as temperatures fall to near freezing overnight. High temperatures will slowly work their way to near 70 degrees by the end of the workweek.
Let's talk about Hurricane Sandy. It's a weak hurricane right now but the setup is more complicated than just that. As it moves toward the Northeast it will merge with a trough moving across the eastern half of the nation. This will transition the storm from a hurricane to what's called an extratropical storm. Basically this means that the storm won't feed off of warm water like a tropical system would. This will turn Sandy into the very, very large storm that its already beginning to become. Threats for wind damage, storm surge, and flooding will be possible for a broad swath of the Delmarva Peninsula through New England. New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington DC are included in this among many other locations. The storm surge issues will be amplified by the size of the storm, which moves more mass of water, and by the fact that this will be happening during a full moon, which maximizes tide. Check out the tropical storm force wind probabilities to the right... this is pretty significant when you consider there's a 60-70% of sustained tropical storm winds from Delaware to Long Island.
Another threat this storm poses is snow. West Virginia with its higher elevations will bear the brunt of the snow with 1 to 2 feet expected in areas. The latest run of the GFS model paints a very large area of 18"+ snowfall amounts through Tuesday evening. This could be crippling because there are still leaves on the trees that this heavy, wet snow will weigh down on snap limbs. Mass power outages are very likely whether you're in the wind/rain area in the Northeast or in the snow area in West Virginia.
In the video below you'll get a full dose of information on Hurricane Sandy and your latest West Tennessee forecast.
Hurricane Sandy is a monster storm. That goes without saying. It's about two hours from landfall as of this writing but that won't matter much due to just how incredibly large the wind field is. Tropical storm winds extend for hundreds of miles from the center of the storm making this the largest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean at over 1,000 miles wide. This is big by area, not by wind speed. While the winds extend for an incredible area the winds in general are at Category 1 speeds near 90 mph. For areas in the tropics this may not sound so bad but for the Northeast this is a disaster since winds rarely get up to that strength with storms up there.
Something that also may be unprecedented here is the extreme snow threat from Sandy for the mountainous regions of West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Snow totals could be 1 to 2 feet in places when this storm is said and done. The other thing to consider with the size and scope of this storm is the storm surge that continues to roll in. Places like New York City and along the Jersey shore could be dealing with storm surge totals in excess of 11 feet thanks to the pure mass of water that will be coming in with the storm. This will create coastal flooding whereas the high rain totals will contribute to inland flooding. You'll hear about this storm for years to come... 765,000 customers are without power across the Northeast already and this storm is just cranking up.
