By comparison, Florence caused upwards of 20 to 30 inches of rain across much of the Carolinas. At present, a maximum of ten inches of rain is forecast to fall over the Florida panhandle and southern Georgia. A fast-moving storm mitigates the possibility of high rainfall totals that would be caused by a slow-moving or stalled storm. Michael is expected to make landfall as a major hurricane of Category 3 strength.īecause Michael is expected to be a fast-moving storm, the potential impacts are almost the opposite of what we saw in Florence. And, with the wind shear set to diminish, Michael is then expected to strengthen further, and this intensification could be even more rapid, as sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico remain one to two degrees Celsius above average. What has been particularly unusual about Michael is that the system has continued to strengthen despite the presence of moderate wind shear. Media reports suggest emergency preparations and declarations are quickly being put in place in more than 100 counties spanning from Mobile, Alabama, through the Florida Panhandle and into the Florida Big Bend region, ranging across some 300 miles (482 kilometers), from tropical storm and storm surge warnings and alerts. Despite this agreement, there is always uncertainty in track and intensity between now and landfall, as evidenced by the forecast changes in Hurricane Florence within 48 hours of landfall. Our RMS HWind team currently highlights Panama Beach and Destin in Florida, two locations some 50 miles (80 kilometers) apart, as the cities most likely to be impacted. Michael will make landfall tomorrow (Wednesday, October 10), and over the last 24 hours, the NHC “Cone of Uncertainty” and many of the model solutions have agreed on a landfall on Wednesday afternoon local time near Panama City, Florida. NOAA GOES-East CONUS GeoColor image at 12:12 UTC October 9, 2018. Hurricane-force winds extended outward up to 40 miles (65 kilometers) from the center and tropical-storm-force winds extended outward up to 195 miles (315 kilometers). Michael is moving toward the north-northwest at close to 12 miles per hour (19 kilometers per hour). Skirting between the eastern tip of the Yucatán Peninsula, and the western tip of Cuba, Michael entered the Gulf of Mexico late evening local time on Monday, October 8.Īs of 09:00 UTC today (Tuesday 9), the latest NHC advisory located Michael at about 420 miles (680 kilometers) south of Panama City, Florida and about 390 miles (630 kilometers) south of Apalachicola, Florida, with sustained winds at 90 miles per hour (150 kilometers per hour), placing it as a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale (SSHWS). Between October 7 and October 8, rapid intensification saw sustained wind speeds jump from 35 miles per hour to 75 miles per hour (120 kilometers per hour) by midday local time on October 8. Tracked by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) since October 2, Michael started out as a broad area of low pressure over the southwestern Caribbean Sea, a couple hundred miles north of Panama.īecoming more organized as it began to move toward the Yucatán Peninsula, by October 6 it achieved Potential Tropical Cyclone status. It’s hard to believe that Hurricane Michael, the thirteenth named storm of the 2018 North Atlantic hurricane season, only achieved tropical storm status just two days ago on Sunday, October 7.
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