Tropical Storm Elsa hits Carolina, on track for New Jersey and New York

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Tropical Storm Elsa over the Carolinas. GIF: NOAA / CIRA

Against all odds, we’re not done with Tropical Storm Elsa yet. An early-season tropical storm that could currently plunge Carolina into heavy rain, it is scheduled to tour the Northeast to end the week.

Elsa has been running since she first attacked Barbados. The storm became the first hurricane of the season, traversed the mountains of Cuba as a tropical storm, and re-inforced a hurricane for a brief period before making landfall in Florida as a tropical storm (and halting rescues at the Surfside apartment collapse in the process). It’s continuing to creep north and will feel the effects as far north as Maine in the United States. The storm is expected to move into an extratropical area and tour Newfoundland and Labrador over the weekend, making for an odd Atlantic hurricane season.

Elsa’s current influence in Carolina

Unfortunately, Elsa maintained the intensity of the Tropical Storm as it crawled over the East Coast. Now, it lies on the Carolina border. Winds blew up to 54 mph (87 km/h) at Myrtle Beach Airport, and Tropical Storm winds radiate 115 miles (185 km) from the center of Elsa, indicating that the storm still packs a good punch.

Winds can intermittently cut power — South Carolina currently reports that more than 11,000 customers are without power — but the area’s real concern is rain. It is expected to be up to 8 inches (20.3 cm) long, which could result in a flash flood. The National Weather Service released a flash flood watch for the area as well as pointing north all the way to Maine. Tornado watches are also found along the Carolina coast, adding another flavor of risk to the mix. In short, anyone in the Carolinas and the Mid-Atlantic should watch Elsa’s effects Thursday.

New York will taste like Elsa

Elsa is expected to appear over open water sometime Friday morning off the coast of New Jersey. It will continue to travel north and will still be a tropical storm when it reaches New York later that day. Impacts will be moderate, with up to 6 inches (15.2 cm) of rain and gusty winds that can flip umbrellas inside out. The National Hurricane Center warns of “limited to significant urban flooding and flooding,” so it’s worth paying attention to how storm drains handle (or not handle) Elsa’s rainfall.

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These effects also apply to large areas of New England, including Boston. However, I purposely referred to New York because New Yorkers love nothing more than to be the center of attention while the rest of the world loves nothing more than New Yorkers hate being the center of attention. Feel free to express your strong opinions in the comments about the subtitle of this section and/or New Yorkers in general. Here, I’ll start: The Yankees are miserable, let’s go to the Red Sox.

Extratropical Storm Elsa will become a thing

By Saturday night, Elsa will appear over the Gulf of St. Lawrence and likely have moved into Extratropical Storm Elsa (sometimes, this type of storm is also referred to as Posttropical). The distinction is just meteorological. An extratropical storm loses key characteristics of a tropical storm, such as a warm core. But Elsa will still be spinning, facing gale-force winds, bringing rain and maybe even some light storms ashore to parts of Atlantic Canada. Forecasts show that it will likely pass off the southern tip of Greenland as an extratropical storm.

There were 16 tropical or extratropical storms that reached the Gulf of St. Lawrence in early July or earlier, according to 142 years of data held by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Six even maintained an orbital position. This makes Elsa’s appearance there strange at this time of year, but not unprecedented. near Greenland, the number of storms is slightly reduced; Only three storms passed within 230 miles (370 kilometers) of the island before mid-July during a record period.

Elsa has already made history

However, Tropical Storm Elsa will be remembered in the history books. First, it produced a record number of terrible frozen memes. (As someone who has no children, I don’t understand any of them.) But beyond internet history, Elsa has also made the mark as a meteorologist.

Elsa is the fifth named storm ever recorded, breaking the record set only last year. After hitting Barbados and the Lesser Antilles, the storm entered what is known as the hurricane cemetery in the eastern Caribbean, an area that experienced two massive storms before July 15 in those 142 years of records. Its course from the Western Atlantic through the Caribbean and eventually to Atlantic Canada is also unheard of at this time of year.

The oddity comes on the heels of the most active hurricane season ever, and after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration updated its 30-year average for hurricane season to include more storms. Part of this can be attributed in part to satellite and aircraft observations as well as natural climate patterns. But scientists have debated the role of climate change in increasing the odds of more severe hurricanes and other impacts, including exacerbation of the devastating 2017 hurricane season.

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