Saturday Aug 26, 2011 Irene Pre-Storm Update #2

Saturday morning beach at sunrise

As of 6:30am EDT conditions are calm.  I went up to check the beach.  The same groundswell as yesterday was out there, around 3-3ft+.  Fortunately for the state of the beach, because the storm has been in the swell shadow of Cape Hatteras and is coming up the coast straddling land, we haven’t had a lot of precursor waves that would have started the erosion process early.  Still, without a sandbar from a summer of record calm weather, there’s nothing to dissipate the energy of the waves that are coming tonight.  If you can read the water, you can tell the lack of sandbar by the shore pound, as well as by noticing the high run up.  As of now, the storm is forecast to be over the Delaware coast at 200am Sunday, which would mean the storm may already be past us for the 7:11am new moon high tide.  Even if that situation occurs, sparing us the worst of it at high tide, the beaches are still going to look a lot different tomorrow.  The only properties worth concern are the Surf Club and those along 8th Avenue in Normandy, as well as the Thunderbird since those structures are on the beach with no dune.

Irene has had a well distributed and large wind field around its center for days now, so at the very least we are going to experience moderate to strong tropical storm conditions tonight and tomorrow morning.  With a forecast that shows the storm remaining a hurricane over Connecticut, it is very well possible that we will experience hurricane conditions or at least hurricane force wind gusts here for a time.  Here are some winds that are occurring right now in Virginia and North Carolina closer to the storm . . .

Virginia Beach, VA          ENE 21 gust to 37
Rodanthe, NC                   ESE 48 gust to 78
Buxton, NC                        ESE 52 gust to 82
Ocracoke, NC                   ESE 47 gust to 62
Emerald Isle, NC              N 30 gust to 52
Wilmington, NC                NW 46 gust to 66

You don't get to see a weather forecast like this in New Jersey too often . . .!

*** Post-storm edit.  Winds were not even close to the intesnity forecast here.