09/27/2025
Praying this storm keeps moving away from us!
Tropical Update: Good morning, all. This is my first tropical update of the day. Overnight, and this morning we've seen some good news in the models. Will it hold? Who knows, but at this point, we're getting close. Over the next 24 hours, we would have higher confidence in the forecast. If you saw my post late last night, I discussed how Major Hurricane Humberto rapidly strengthened into a Category 4 Hurricane faster than the models had predicted, and it could help pull PTC9 out to sea with it. Well, this morning, many of the models have trended that way, but while the trend is our friend, will it hold, or will we see the wind shield effect, where the models trend right back the other way?
I had a lot of people ask why I still have two scenarios and am not posting rain/wind graphics. This is why the forecast is not finalized.
📌I've created a graphic showing the European Ensembles. As you can see with PTC9 on the left side, there are two main camps, almost exactly like my two scenarios I've been showing for days. You can see the one group takes the storm north and then, before getting too close to the Carolinas, turns clean out to sea.
The other section brings the storm close to the coast, stalls/landfalls along the Carolina Coastline. This would be the worst-case scenario with winds, heavy rainfall, flash flooding, and storm surge all being likely for parts of NC and SC. That trend this morning overnight and this morning has decreased some, but exactly where the turn would occur still up in the air.
📌What are ensembles? Weather ensembles are a forecasting technique where a weather model is run many times with small changes to the starting conditions or model physics. This creates a range of possible outcomes, showing both the most likely scenario and the uncertainty in the forecast. This is a great way to forecast, and I love doing it. They add different scenarios to the forecast and see where the storm still goes. The closer the runs agree, the higher the forecast confidence; the more they diverge, the lower the confidence.
😎 The Bottom Line: The storm is now in the Bahamas and near Cuba, and it remains quite disorganized until we have a closed center. The models are going to be all over the place. So, we can't lock in a solution yet, but the signs this morning are promising, so I hope the models hold over the next 12-24 hours. So Ethan, but we could have impacts as soon as Monday night? Well, if you're along the coast, I would make some plans and prepare for potential impacts, but there's no reason to panic. Better to be prepared rather than surprised. I like to be fully transparent and that's why for the last few days I've been showing you the options and possible tracks it could go. I want everyone to know both worst-case and best-case scenarios.
This is my first update. I plan to have another one around lunchtime or early afternoon. I will dive further into the impacts of the worst-case and best-case scenarios. The areas to watch for now are mainly along the coast into South Carolina coast and parts of Eastern NC. Western NC/parts of Central NC just stay aware, but right now nothing looks too concerning at this point. However, the forecast is not fully set in stone yet. I hope this helps. I am sorry this is such a painful and long/drawn-out forecast. There are too many factors, and confidence is not high in any solution; we're in uncharted territory.
Now, I am going to watch some College Gameday live from Penn State and work on my next forecast! Have a good Saturday morning.
-Ethan