This is going to be a very interesting week that is setting up for the Deep South and inland areas of the Southeast US. This includes Alabama, Georgia, and Florida especially the northwest coast from the Florida big bend westward across the entire panhandle to Coastal Alabama. Satellite pictures and loops show low pressure in the Western Caribbean is becoming better organized and will likely become a tropical storm in the next 24 hours as it tracks northwestward. The risk period appears to be Thursday and Friday of this week.
Conditions are very favorable for this system to develop into a tropical storm and all weather guidance models show this system becoming a major hurricane later this week as it tracks northward through the Eastern Gulf of Mexico.
What makes this system potentially dangerous is a strong upper low that will develop in the Plains today and then dive into the Lower Mississippi Valley. This creates a situation where the upper air low will steer the storm generally northward to the Gulf Coast of Florida as the above loop of the GFS model shows. It will also create a situation where a land-falling hurricane will be very slow to weaken as it heads northward. This means that strong winds could spread as far north as North Georgia, and Tennessee. We have some early model track guidance that is consistent with the forecast of the global models.
Many of the National Hurricane Center intensity models show this storm strengthening to a hurricane and possibly to a category 3 hurricane before landfall. A hurricane that is slow to weaken will mean that 40 to 60 mph winds spreading well inland of the coast is not out of the question. We also will see significant rainfall.
The Weather Prediction Center is forecasting a large swath of 5 to 8-inch rainfalls over much of the Eastern Gulf States into the interior Southeast US as well as for much of Florida. In addition to the heavy rain and strong wind potential, this setup could be quite conducive for a widespread severe weather outbreak from Eastern Alabama to Georgia and Florida. Residents across the South and Southeast US from Louisiana to Florida should pay closer attention to developments over the next few days.