Despite many warnings that the path of major Hurricane Dorian would be difficult to predict and subject to change, the latest adjustments in its projected course are still shockingly large. In the early hours of Saturday morning, models looking at the future course of the storm took a large swing. Where most previous models had shown the storm making landfall somewhere near the center of the Florida peninsula then turning north, that northward turn is now expected to begin as the storm slowly crosses the narrow stretch of Atlantic between the Bahamas and the Florida coast. As a result, the latest projections show Dorian may not come ashore at all. Or at least, not come ashore in Florida.
However, this doesn’t mean that the storm is going to be less dangerous or cause less damage. Every model of the storm, including the U.S. model shown above, continue to be taken with a huge note of caution as at this point the models projecting Dorian’s path continue to be widely divergent. The European model, which has in many past events proven more reliable shows Dorian hooking even more sharply to the east and north, moving back out to sea rather than making a landfall in the Carolinas as the U.S. model now projects.
In less than 24 hours, the entire “spaghetti” collection of possible tracks has shifted wildly. And they may well shift again. This is a slow moving storm. There is no strong guiding current. It is extremely subject to small changes in conditions. It’s a forecast nightmare. No one in the region should be yet breathing any sigh of relief or feeling confident that they are out of danger.
Even if the eye of the storm does not make landfall, the coast-skimming track of Dorian means that hurricane-force winds could be felt over more than a hundred miles of Florida’s Atlantic coast, a prolonged storm surge could be dragged along the coastline, and a deluge of rain can still be expected. And then, coastal Georgia and South Carolina, which had not been expecting to see this storm, may actually receive Dorian as a Class 2 hurricane, or have it skim the coast again doing a repeat of its actions in Florida.
And should Dorian strike the coast of South Carolina, it will not arrive until Thursday. The South Atlantic coastline is going to be living with this storm for a week.
The latest U.S. model calls for a “prolonged period of life-threatening storm surge” as Dorian turns north off Jupiter on Monday morning, is off the coast of Jacksonville a day later, and continues to drag slowly on the coast — aided in it’s destruction by the full cycle of high tides.
The extent to which projections for Dorian have changed can be seen in a comparison of the U.S. model tracks over the last three days. The trends seen here, with the track bending ever more sharply to not just avoid crossing into the Gulf, but miss landfall altogether, may continue. In a best case scenario, Dorian may spin away to sea, avoiding the U.S. coast entirely. Do not bet on it.
If you are in the region, continue to expect disruptions and continue to stay closely attuned to changing predictions. Be prepared to seek shelter and high ground.
And if you are in Georgia or South Carolina and expected this storm to be something not of direct concern … think again.
Saturday, Aug 31, 2019 · 1:48:42 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
After some discussion in the comments, I looked back at the morning projections for the strength of Dorian at this point. They show just how consistently the projections have underestimated the growth of the storm and how unreliable they have been even over a relatively short period.