Workers in the National Weather Service's State College office. (Sydney Roach/WPSU)
Pa. Meteorologist predicts another hurricane is coming to the East Coast region in the next couple of days
-
Asia Tabb
Workers in the National Weather Service's State College office. (Sydney Roach/WPSU)
Aired; August 14th, 2024.
Heading into the month of September, we are heading into the peak of hurricane season. The Central Pennsylvania region just experienced remnants of Hurricane Debbie in the past week. ABC 27’s Meteorologist Dan Tomaso, says hurricane season is roughly between August though September.
“Most of our impacts from any hurricane or tropical storm will be from heavy rain. And really, if you think about it, where these storms come from, thousands of miles away, it’s the tropics. So that tropical air moves with the circulation. And unfortunately, if there is a tropical storm or a depression remnant, whatever, and it lingers over a certain period of time, it can lead to very heavy rain. Debby was unique in that it dropped a very narrow band of very heavy rain, and it didn’t linger. It was only here for about 12 to 16 hours, but it was here long enough that parts of the Susquehanna River basin picked up 5 or 6in of rain, which can locally lead to problems. And as we saw, that can lead to flooding. It can also lead to, water table issues that unfortunately water supply can be affected. And I know residents of Mechanicsburg, parts of eastern Cumberland County, had water boil issues, that they had to boil their water first before using it. So all those things come with unfortunately, these storms and you know it for some people that may have just moved to this area, may not think is think of Pennsylvania as a state that could get affected, but absolutely it can be”
National Weather Service confirmed an EF1 tornado touched down in Dauphin County on Friday. The tornado had a peak wind speed of 105 per mile and was 300 yards wide. It touched down near Gibson Street around 4:33 a.m. traveling 3.48 miles north according to the National Weather Service.
“So Harrisburg, the surrounding area was on the eastern side. There tends to be a lot of spin and that moisture, that humidity actually can help some of these updrafts lift and create tornadoes. And so unfortunately, we do say Wednesday when the track seemed about final, that it was going to go west of the mid-state, that we could be in line for some brief tornadoes. And the timing was very unfortunate that it was 430 in the morning. We were standing by ready, but a warning was never issued. And the tornado did hit parts of Harrisburg, from about the Steelton area northward into Susquehanna Township.”
Tomaso suggested there will be more hurricanes coming to the East Coast region in the next couple of days.
So unfortunately, there’s already another storm that will likely become a hurricane here in the coming days. That’s her nest. So it is currently a tropical storm and strengthening over the Caribbean that will likely head out to open water. And then unfortunately, it could its path could take it in the direction of Bermuda and possibly eastern Canada. So that’s the next storm. But as I mentioned earlier in the interview, we are now moving into the peak part of the season, and all indications are this is going to be an extremely active season already. We can see signs of that with Debbie in Nest. So for instance, so the East Coast still could see another storm or two that comes up through or possibly even more. We’re hoping it doesn’t get to that point because as we just saw the heavy rain that comes with these things. Yes, it’s a good thing when you have a drought, but if you had repeated storms like this, it is not a good thing. So it is something that is actively on our mind that we’re going to be tracking every single storm that develops. And you may say, where do they develop? Well, well, east of the Caribbean sometimes. So over the central antic ocean again, where there’s no human being anywhere in sight. And so we track them from that spot onward. And so, for instance, we were tracking Debbie for about ten days. And so by the time day five, day six came about, that’s when we started to really pick up on the trends that this is going to be a Pennsylvania problem, too.
