The tropics are heating up as Humberto is forecast to become a major hurricane in the central Atlantic while another system closer to the U.S., Potential Tropical Cyclone Nine, is forecast to become Tropical Storm Imelda by the end of the weekend. The latest forecast can be found here.
(MORE: What Is A Potential Tropical Cyclone?)
While “future Imelda” is likely to bring threats to parts of the Southeast U.S. and Bahamas, it is still far too soon to tell what exactly we could see. The intensity and track of topical systems play a huge part in where and what impacts will be seen, and right now, there are still many possibilities.
However, regardless of the forecast, there is one threat that we’re confident of this far out in time, and that is both storms’ ability to generate large waves.
Wave Height Forecast
Tropical storms and hurricane winds churn up the ocean, generating large swells that, when they reach the coast, result in large breaking waves and strong rip currents. This general push of waves and water toward the coast can also result in flooding of normally dry areas at high tide, even in regions not directly hit by the storm.
With Potential Tropical Cyclone Nine so close to the U.S. as well as Humberto a bit farther out to sea, days of onshore winds are likely up and down the Eastern Seaboard, generating large-scale high surf, dangerous rip currents and high tide coastal flooding from Florida to New England next week.
In the earlier half of next week, these impacts will mostly be felt from Florida to the Carolinas, but by the later half of the week they will extend northward all the way up to New England, and they’re likely to linger for many days.
Again, regardless of the strength of these storms or where they track, there will be days of dangerous surf, rip currents and coastal flooding next week along the Eastern Seaboard.
Please stay up to date and check back with us at weather.com for important updates in the days ahead as the forecast of these storms becomes clearer.
Miriam Guthrie graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with an undergraduate degree in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and is now a meteorology intern with weather.com while working toward her master’s.