As of the evening of October 1, the forecast for Hurricane Joaquin seems less threatening.
The NOAA predicts the storm will blow out into the Atlantic Ocean later this week:
—Rob Marciano (@RobMarciano) October 2, 2015
Here's everything we know about Joaquin so far:
It's strong
Some of the latest predictions show it could intensify to a Category 5 by the end of the night. If it makes landfall in the US it will be the strongest in almost a decade to do so, since Hurricane Wilma made landfall in Florida in October 2005.
It's bringing a lot of rain
Hurricane Joaquin could bring up to two feet of rain to the US East Coast — even if it doesn't make landfall. From the latest forecasts, it looks like either Virginia or New Jersey will get drenched the most.
Here's the animation of the rainfall projections along the east coast from September 30 to October 7. The projection shown here isn’t an official NOAA prediction, but it pulls data from US, Canadian, European, Japanese, and other forecast models. The color bar, which is displayed in inches, ranges from light rain in green to torrential downpours producing up to 2 feet of rain in orange.
States as far south as South Carolina all the way up to Maine could get pummeled with rain.
It's going to be windy
Depending where the Hurricane heads, winds could be intense. According to WXShift:
The duration of this wind event is absolutely mind-boggling. Data from the National Weather Service point forecast for Atlantic City International Airport (ACY), New Jersey, suggest a strong onshore wind event will occur over coastal New Jersey for more than 100 consecutive hours (Yes, four days and then some)!
That means sustained winds of 20 miles per hour (with gusts up to 45 miles per hour) could be blowing for days, even before Joaquin makes landfall.
Here's NOAA's hurricane wind predictions through October 6 (as of October 1).
Strong winds mean storm surges
The wind and rain from the Hurricane will push the ocean's water up onto land, potentially creating a dangerous storm surge, though we can't say much for sure about where this will hit or how high it will be.
According to WXShift: "For now, one of the take home points is that this widespread wind event will create a long-duration storm surge even if Hurricane Joaquin does not make a direct landfall on the U.S. Atlantic Coast."
We really don't know where it's going to hit, if anywhere
The predicted path (above) looks like it's headed straight toward Cape Cod, but that's not necessarily true. That path is the average of a few wildly different scenarios that could play out.
Eric Holthaus, a meteorologist who writes for Slate, noted on Wednesday that:
The latest official National Hurricane Center forecast to shift back to the north, toward the New York City metro area, though I don’t think it will remain there for long. That’s because a New York City landfall hasn’t been consistently showing up in any model — it’s merely the NHC’s way of splitting the difference between two very different but roughly equally likely possibilities: a landfall in the Carolinas/Virginia or a track safely out to sea.
You can see the two different groupings of predicted tracks in this graphic, from TropicalTidbits.com:
Holthaus tweeted late on Thursday that it's looking more likely that Joaquin will move out to sea, confirmed with the 5pm National Hurricane Center update:
—Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) October 1, 2015
The latest update says the storm could still make landfall in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the Delmarva peninsula, New York City, Hartford, Connecticut, Boston, Massachusetts, and Portland, Maine.
The problem is not that we're terrible at understanding what various atmospheric data points mean. It's that there are so very many data points, and they're all changing every single second. Our tools for understanding the limited information we have to go on are actually pretty advanced.
Holthaus explains this problem well: "To accurately understand what the weather will do days in advance, you have to observe it perfectly — and perfectly understand the underlying physics. We actually do the second part better than the first — there is just no way to launch enough weather balloons or satellites to monitor the entire Earth system, down to the millimeter."
Still, even with the general complexities of weather forecasting, Hurricane Joaquin is what Columbia researcher Adam Sobel calls "an unusually uncertain situation, with the forecasts changing more rapidly than usual."
Flooding has already started, and will get much worse
According to Holthaus: "Minor coastal flooding is already occurring along the East Coast from strong onshore winds being funneled between Joaquin to the south and strong Canadian high pressure to the north. That flooding will likely worsen over the next few days, regardless of the track of Joaquin."
—Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) October 1, 2015
States are prepping for the worst
New Jersey has already declared a state of emergency in preparation for the storm to hit.
"We know there is definitely going to be moderate and likely to be major flooding events in South Jersey Friday and Saturday with five to six inches of rainfall expected to come," Governor Chris Christie said at a Thursday morning press conference.
North Carolina and Virginia have also declared state of emergency.
Hurricane watches and warnings may go into effect late Thursday or early Friday.
We are frequently updating this post, so check back often. You can also use the WNYC hurricane tracker tool and follow the National Hurricane Center for the latest details. We found this Reddit post very thorough as well.
