I cannot imagine a more perfect day on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Low humidity, mid 70’s a few wispy clouds in a perfect blue sky, dappled sunlight filtering through the trees and gentle breezes fluttering the leaves.
How is this possible with the tropical storm Isobel only 300 miles or so away and closing fast. Is this weather great partially because of something the hurricane is doing at that distance or is it just luck?
Lifelong resident of New Orleans and veteran of several hurricanes checking in.
I don’t know the meteorological reasons for this effect, but I can tell you that nice weather before a hurricane’s arrival is pretty typical.
Calm before the storm.
Watch out.
Plus, this storm stayed compact for a long time. High pressure to the northeast is steering it towrds land and providing your nice sky. A low pressure system would have steered it away and would have fed in some crappy weather as it did so.
So, since a high pressure system is pushing it towards you, and while it remains fairly compact, all hell will break loose suddenly rather than general crappiness happening gradually.
From nhc.noaa.gov:
and
FWIW it’s sort of breezy here, say 15 mph winds. My guess would be that Isabel would have to get 85 miles closer before they even felt 38 mph winds at Cape Hatteras:
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[sup]Emphasis mine.[/sup][/ul]