Hurricane Florence: Brooklyn will likely dodge the big one

NYC OEM 'Closely Monitoring' the Category 4 Storm

September 10, 2018 By Mary Frost Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Hurricane Florence is projected to make landfall in the Carolinas Late Thursday or early Friday, according to projections by NOAA on Monday. Map and data courtesy of NOAA.

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Looks like we’ve lucked out: It’s not likely that Hurricane Florence will have any major effect on New York City’s weather, according to Accuweather senior meteorologist Tom Kines.

But as always when it comes to the weather, “You gotta keep one eye open,” he told the Brooklyn Eagle on Monday.

Hurricane Florence, churning towards the Eastern U.S. coast in the Atlantic Ocean, became a Category 4 storm around noon on Monday, and it’s expected to become even more powerful as it moves over warmer waters the next couple of days.

The hurricane could hit anywhere from the Carolinas to the mid-Atlantic by late Thursday or early Friday. According to the National Hurricane Center, “there is increasing confidence that Florence will be a large and extremely dangerous hurricane.” States of emergency have already been declared in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, where a “life threatening” storm surge is likely. Dangerous fresh-water flooding is also expected, and will be made worse by a wet summer.

It’s looking more and more probable that New York City will be dodging a direct hit, however.

“Florence will have little effect on our weather except for some rough surf which might cause beach erosion,” Kines said. And though Florence will likely be dumping prodigious amounts of rain on the Carolinas, Virginia and nearby areas, “the odds are that all that moisture will stay south of us,” at least through most of the weekend, he said.

The storm may stall in the Carolinas, “causing havoc,” Kines said. “That’s the place you don’t want to be.”

New York City’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) is “closely monitoring Hurricane Florence and the possible effects the storm may have on the city as it continues its track,” OEM spokesman Omar Bourne told the Eagle late Monday afternoon. While the hurricane “currently poses no immediate threat” to the city, “We remain in constant communication with the National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service to track and monitor Hurricane Florence and share storm updates with city, state, and private sector partners, and have convened conference calls with our agency partners to discuss potential preparations should the storm track toward the city,” he said.

Two of the four “spaghetti” tracks of the European model ensemble members show Florence’s remnant circling back into the Atlantic Ocean after its travels through the Eastern coastal states, just to the south of Long Island, according to Weather Underground.