08/17/2025

Overlook on the week ahead  and Erin.

The surface chart and radar shows the cold front approaching and the  line of isolated thunderstorms and scattered rain showers moving across New York State and Pennsylvania. The chart also shows the system out west that will be bringing us widespread scattered rain showers and thunderstorms for midweek.

The weekend has been warm and quite humid. As the cold front continues to drop south and east this afternoon into tonight, It will be losing some of its punch and generally falling apart; the scattered showers and thunderstorms will move ahead of it across the region. Thunderstorms will be non severe; but they will be capable of dropping moderate to heavy rainfall at times. The cold front isn't going to be moving all that fast And as it moves into Southeast New England, Southeast Pennsylvania into the I-95 Corridor say 8-9 pm, rain should become much more spotty as we lose the sun.

Behind the front cooler and less humid conditions will move into the region as dryer air sets up overhead. These conditions hang around for Monday into Tuesday. Then we will see  a trough with a cold front move in during Tuesday into Wednesday. This cold front will stall and then we will see a weak short wave disturbance move a long it. This will produce widespread but scattered rain showers, and non severe thunderstorms. 

High pressure will be building in for the second half of the week, keeping things quiet with comfortable temperatures with only a chance for some isolated showers and thunderstorms. Then over the weekend a cold front will approach and come through reintroducing the chance for scattered rain showers and some thunderstorms.

Erin

Yesterday She was a category 5 hurricane with 160 mph. But as is typical of very strong powerful hurricanes they have a hard time maintaining that power.

Image credit Tropical Tidbits

Currently, the national hurricane center has her with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph with a minimum central pressure of 946 mb, tracking west northwest at 13 mph. The weakening is the result of her currently undergoing a eye wall replacement cycle. As the cycle continues and the new eye wall takes over she should start to re-strength later today. She is also going to become much larger as a result of the EWR.

Image credit Tomer Burg

She is poised to start making a turn more to the north; as she navigates her way through that weakness between high pressure over the US and that strong Bermuda high sub tropical ridge over the Atlantic. 

She will pass close to the Turks and Caicos, Bringing Tropical Storm force wind gust. She looks to pass north and east Of the Bahamas. Then she should be tracking north by the time she approaches the latitude of the border between South Carolina and North Carolina, tracking between the East Coast and Bermuda, her center will stay well east of  the East Coast. But with her increasing size, her outer rain bands could reach parts of the East Coast. She also could bring enough surge that would bring light flooding to some of the inlets along the coast. She likely will  bring a breezy wind to the Outer Banks, Long Island, Cape Cod and places like Nantucket. Her most severe impact along the East Coast will be in the form of large swells and dangerous rip currents. The East Coast will really start to feel the larger swells and stronger rip currents by Wednesday.

As the trough sets up in the Northeast into Southeast Canada she will sharply recurve north and east, away from New England. As she's heading out she should stay south and east of Nova Scotia but she could pass close to Newfoundland, Avalon Peninsula and Saint John's, bringing  the danger of some coastal flooding and rain. Those in Bermuda will be on the east side of Erin so they could experience conditions that are a bit worse and those are to the west of her track.

In my opinion Erin has signaled her intentions very well and I've been happy with the forecast I've been talking out for the last week. My forecast has been very consistent. But we must remember most hurricanes aren't so kind about telegraphing their intentions so well.