Over the past several computer model runs, Tropical Storm Joaquin has been shown to become a large, violent hurricane and impact the East Coast, potentially anywhere from Virginia to Massachusetts. Although there is a ‘general’ trend that shows the storm turn into the US East Coast, there are major differences in exact strength and location.
ECMWF VS GFS:
The 12z run of the ECMWF and the 18z run of the GFS have some very major differences. For instance, the ECMWF shows a large and violent storm off of the coast of Florida, that quickly turns away out to sea and fizzles out over the open Atlantic. The GFS shows a less strong storm developing near The Bahamas over the next several days and moving up the coast to impact mostly Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware initially, before moving up as a weaker system towards the rest of the Northeast.
At the moment though, it seems no matter what situation occurs, more than 10 inches of rain is likely to fall across the Northeast before next Wednesday.
We’ll continue to keep an eye on this system as its track becomes more and more clear.
Weather 360 