Expert: Maria & Katia Won't Make Local Landfall

As the rain from Tropical Storm Lee dissipates, and the cleanup from Hurricane Irene is ongoing, the potential affects from Katia, Nate, and Maria are enough to keep local meteorologists on edge.

“We’ve definitely hit an apex in the hurricane season, so it is no wonder that there are three named systems in the Atlantic. This is slowly becoming the end of the peak of the season though, and New Jersey may luck out,” NYNJPAweather.com meteorologist, Steven DiMartino said on Thursday.

In fact, that as many as three named storms at once looked likely at some point in September.

Within hours of Hurricane Irene’s departure from New Jersey, rumors began swirling that another; potentially larger hurricane was headed straight for the Garden State. That hurricane has developed into Hurricane Katia, and DiMartino sees good news ahead.

“She is a slot hurricane, which means she’ll travel right between the east coast and Bermuda, and eventually out to sea” DiMartino says.

In the mean time, trouble lies ahead in the immediate future.Both the National Weather Service and Steven DiMartino are warning about possible rip currents through today and tomorrow.

But DiMartino says what’s steering Katia away is actually another problem that is currently plaguing the Northeast: the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee.

“Lee is kicking Katia out to sea. So while the upper level low (the remnants of Lee) has produced massive rainfall, it has created a trough that will kick Katia out to sea.,” DiMartino said. “So I guess you could say that we’re trading off the flooding rains for the potentially devastating effects of a larger tropical system.”

A trough is simply known as a large area of low atmospheric pressure (Low pressures are generally associated with poor weather or storms).

The Mount Holly office of the National Weather Service (NWS) warns of the potential effects of rip currents off the New Jersey coast through Saturday. But one could argue that Lee has spared the Jersey Shore.

The NWS said in a phone interview that rainfall totals in Monmouth County this week have ranged from just a half of an inch in the southern portion of the county, to almost 2” in Freehold.  It is still a drop in the bucket compared with rainfall totals as high as 8” in Morris County.

But if you’ve at looked some of the latest forecast tracks for Tropical Storm Maria, you’re bound to feel a little uneasy. The storm, which as of 8 am was located 185 miles east of Barbados, has an eerily similar track to the one Irene had a few weeks ago.

“The poorly disorganized system is being affected by windshear right now, which is preventing it from developing. And even after it passes that area towards the end of the weekend, it won’t take the same track as Irene did,” DiMartino said.

The system is forecasted to be situated near the southeastern US coast by next Wednesday.

And while DiMartino wouldn’t count out a possible landfall in the southeastern United States, he seemed comfortable that an east coast trough would steer the storm away from a possible landfall in the Northern Mid-Atlantic states.

“But trouble could still be ahead for the Jersey Shore,” DiMartino warns. “It will get more and more difficult for tropical systems to directly impact the Jersey Shore because our troughs will get stronger in the fall, and they should kick a lot of systems away. Of course, we ‘ll deal with a lot of rainfall as a result possibly through October."