The tropical rainstorm that forecasters are expecting to strengthen into Hurricane Helene is heading for the Gulf Coast, but where exactly?
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00:00It's still a tropical rainstorm. It will remain again a bit disheveled for another 12 hours or so,
00:06gradually strengthening and becoming more organized as it enters the eastern Gulf of
00:11Mexico. So let's take a look at this through another lens here. This is the zone of
00:15really abundant moisture, a growing area of thunderstorms drifting north. There's not much
00:20moisture in the Gulf of Mexico at the moment, but this storm is going to import its own moisture.
00:24Other ingredients, we have plenty of warm water, 85, 86 degrees out there,
00:29not much wind shear. You can see we're on the lighter end of the scale there, so
00:33the Gulf of Mexico is open for development and rapid intensification. The eastern part of this
00:39is where we're going to see our problems here, and there's not much wind shear out there.
00:42If this interior low over the southern plains and the Ozarks stalls and stays west, and if this
00:48strong ridge of high pressure off the southeast coast remains strong, well, this system could
00:52come farther west. If the opposite takes place and the ridge of high pressure breaks down,
00:57weakens, moves farther east, and the trough kicks farther east a little faster, then that will draw
01:03the storm farther to the east. Those are the players on the field. The most likely scenario
01:07is between those two outcomes, looking at landfall probably near or just east of Port St. Joe and
01:13Apalachicola around 5 p.m. Thursday as a major hurricane. In the meantime, we're going to go
01:18from tropical rainstorm to tropical storm to hurricane over just 48 hours and probably a
01:23strengthening Category 2 hurricane in that short time. Three to six foot storm surge is likely into
01:28the western part of Cuba, and again, we're very concerned about landfall 5 p.m. Thursday as a
01:33Category 3 hurricane, a major hurricane with a huge storm surge of 10 to 15 feet as the ocean water
01:40is driven inland by the east side of the storm circulation in that concave part of the coastline,
01:47along with gusts of wind 140 plus miles per hour in the eastern eyewall, a lot of power outages out
01:53there, and also 8 to 12 inches of rain for some, not just near the coast, but also into the east
01:59facing slopes of the southern Appalachians, and then also 8 to 12 inches of rain in many other
02:04areas, including into the Ozark Plateau as the storm meanders inland.