Hurricane Jose is several hundred miles east of the Space Coast of Florida. There is very little wind shear, so at the present time, Jose is slowly gaining some strength. The forward motion is still to the northwest and the storm has yet to make its turn to the due north.
Jose will make his closest approach to New England late Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. As Jose continues to move through, conditions for further development are rather poor. Wind shear will increase and ocean water temperatures gradually drop off.
Typically for a land falling tropical cyclone in the northeast, you need a feature to “suck” the storm into the coast. There is also a blocking high, which is sitting off the coast, which prevents the storm from going out to sea. Currently, we don’t see a feature that will draw the storm into the coast. The area of high pressure is there, but it will remain rather weak.
As far as impacts, we will see at least some. With a track farther off the coast we will see high surf, beach erosion, minor to moderate coast flooding and some gusty showers along the coast. If the track is hugging the coast, we could see high end tropical storm force winds, heavy rain, coastal flooding, beach erosion and high surf.
Keep in mind, as the storm transitions from a tropical to extra-tropical system, the wind field will be expanding. Tropical storm for wind gusts will extend several hundred miles away from the center. Think of this as an early season Nor’easter.
We are entering into a period of astronomically high tides. With an onshore flow for several days we could see an increased threat for coastal flooding.
