East Coast, Gulf Coast Now At Risk for Tropical Cyclone

It now appears that the Gulf Coast AND East Coast are at risk of being threatened by a tropical cyclone, as model guidance has come into agreement still a while out.

The ECMWF model has been rather consistent with its idea of holding high pressure over the Atlantic to provide a favorable environment for tropical cyclone formation in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Over the last few runs, this model has developed a tropical cyclone and had it landfall on the Gulf Coast. Its most recent forecast has a tropical cyclone shooting into Florida on June 7th, as the image above indicates. Considering the consistency of this forecast and agreement with other modeling systems I would not be surprised to see any of the Gulf Coast states affected. As of right now, states from Louisiana to Florida are at the higher risk of a landfalling tropical cyclone.

Moving ahead into June 9th, we find that the tropical cyclone has moved through Florida and is harassing the coastline north of Florida. Moving forward into this model run the ECMWF continues to push the tropical cyclone closer to shore in response to stagnant high pressure to the southeast of the Canadian Maritimes. This is actually a pretty plausible solution- if a tropical cyclone does form and is able to make landfall in Florida, the synoptic pattern would favor the tropical system being pushed more towards land- exactly how close to the Eastern Seaboard is the main question here.

Multiple GFS Ensemble members agree with the idea of tropical cyclone formation and landfall on the Gulf Coast. From there, these same members tend to agree with the cyclone affecting the East Coast after pushing through Florida. When a model solution gets the backing of ensembles, the solution tends to be a rather plausible one. We're still a long ways out, but I feel that this situation needs to be monitored closely in coming days.

Andrew