Coastal storm to bring meaningful impacts to parts of New England and the Mid-Atlantic this weekend

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In brief: A nor’easter is going to deliver gusty winds, heavy rain, and tidal flooding to portions of New England, Long Island, and the Mid-Atlantic heading into the weekend. We discuss the expected impacts and details and whether or not it becomes tropical. We also look at the Pacific, where a cat 5 is likely to emerge in Hurricane Polo off the Mexico coast.

Nor’easter update

We continue to watch for the development of a rather impactful nor’easter this weekend off the coast of New England. Ahead of the storm, persistent onshore flow will lead to tidal flooding on parts of the coast from Delmarva through New Jersey. Moderate coastal flooding is a possibility in New Jersey as early as tomorrow.

Areas of moderate tidal flooding are possible, if not likely in New Jersey and Delaware tomorrow or Thursday. (NOAA)

We don’t currently expect “major” tidal flooding.

The nor’easter itself will begin to develop tomorrow and Thursday. The evolution will be slow and complex, but it will become more of a classic coastal storm by this weekend. Below is the European model’s depiction of the system, not to say it’s developing and tracking it correctly, though it’s in line with other model guidance.

The evolution of this weekend’s nor’easter as depicted by the European model. It peaks on Saturday or Sunday before slowly weakening. (WeatherFront)

In terms of wind, anywhere you see the purple color up there, winds could sustain in the 20 to 40 mph range with gusts perhaps north of 50 mph, especially closer to the southeast extremes of the coast, such as The Hamptons or Montauk, Nantucket, or Block Island, RI. Of course, changes in track would mean changes in where those impacts go exactly. But this looks like a full blown nor’easter like you’d see in mid-winter, except without the snow, of course. More on the potential evolution to a tropical or subtropical system below.

Track will be important in determining exactly how much rain falls. With a multi-day coastal storm sitting close to the coast, there will be potential for excess rainfall. High moisture levels will pump into southeast New England. It’s still early to get too specific on rainfall totals, but the European AI ensemble as an example has 40-50 percent probabilities of at least 3 inches near Boston and in southeast Massachusetts.

Euro AI Model probability of 3 inches in 48 hours. (Polarwx.com)

This is over 48 hours, and the window for rain may be closer to 72 hours. Bottom line: Heavy rain is a good possibility in parts of New England and Long Island, although the specific details are yet to be ironed out.

Does it become tropical?

While Google’s Deep Mind and other ensemble models are picking up on the storm, there is still an open question as to whether or not it becomes tropical in nature. It will have time, and it will have warm water temperatures over which it sits for several days.

Sea-surface temperatures are plenty above normal, especially in the northwest Atlantic. (Cyclonicwx.com)

All that may still not be enough, but there is still a “warm core” element of this that shows up in model guidance today, and that indicates that there is some “there” there.

Some warm core elements are showing up with respect to the weekend storm so that it could begin to briefly acquire tropical or subtropical characteristics before it weakens. (Florida State University)

But the bottom line is tropical or not, the impacts should be similar regardless. The bigger issue right now is homing in on the track details of whatever it is to fine tune rain probabilities, wind gust potential, and severity of coastal flooding.

Rest of the Atlantic (and Pacific)

Fay is on its way out now, with maximum winds down to 40 mph.

Fay has lost all deep thunderstorm activity. (WeatherFront)

All in all, Fay goes to the clubhouse in the lead for intensity but 2nd place behind Bertha for ACE.

The NHC has also indicated an area off the coast of Africa with 30 percent development odds over the next week. This will emerge from a wave coming off Africa tomorrow. Steering currents are likely to quickly turn this northwest and due north, not far off the African coast, a bit of an odd track.

The next wave up will emerge off Africa in the next day or two. (WeatherFront)

No threat to North America, but probably another open ocean lower-end storm. We’ll see.

Last week we did mention that there was some “noise” showing up in the Gulf and western Atlantic in the 10 to 14 day period Well, that’s now the 3 to 7 day period and nothing has rolled forward. All my X’s live in the Pacific, where both Polo and Odalys are swirling. Polo will be an interesting storm in that it will likely explode into a high-end major hurricane, possibly a category 5 storm later today.

Hurricane Polo is likely to turn into a monster off the Mexico coast later today. (WeatherFront)

While the storm should stay off the coast of Mexico, it will pass close enough to deliver fringe impacts to a portion of the coastline. After meandering around the Pacific for a bit, Polo’s remnant moisture may move its way into the Desert Southwest or Texas next week. Those areas are being hit rather hard by late season monsoon moisture right now, so this situation will need to be monitored to see if that potential is realistic or not over the next 5 to 7 days.

A little busier this week, as Fay fizzles and the action picks up off New England and New Jersey

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In brief: As Tropical Storm Fay fades away, attention will turn to New England and the Mid-Atlantic, where a potentially moderate to strong nor’easter will impact that region. Interestingly, there is also real potential that this nor’easter could transition to a tropical storm as well. We explain below.

Thanks for letting me take a couple days off here in the middle of peak season, both our readers and the tropics themselves. But things look busier now in interesting places. Let’s step through things.

Tropical Storm Fay

First, we have Tropical Storm Fay wandering out in the middle of the open Atlantic, no threat to land. It had been a threat to the 2026 hurricane-free record we’ve been carrying.

Tropical Storm Fay has peaked and will dissipate later this week. (WeatherFront)

Maximum sustained winds did hit 70 mph (estimated) last night as Fay briefly made a run for hurricane intensity. But that risk is now over with, and we’re going to see Fay fade away as the week moves forward.

Fay will end up as the strongest storm of the 2026 season so far, and it will also add about 1.5 or so unit of ACE to our weak total.

Northeast risk: Nor’easter or hybrid nor’easter/tropical storm?

There’s been a little bit of buzz up here in my new digs in Connecticut about a potential nor’easter this week. This one has a lot of interesting elements to it, and I think it also has the risk to eventually acquire a name. Let’s discuss.

First, the most imminent concern with this system is tidal flooding. Places like New Jersey and Delaware may be most vulnerable to this aspect of things through the week. Onshore flow begins in earnest on Tuesday and continues through Friday.

Onshore winds will eventually become more north-northeasterly as we get to the weekend, but steady onshore flow for multiple high tide cycles presents a tidal flooding risk for the Mid-Atlantic and parts of Long Island or New England. (WeatherFront)

The wind will eventually become more northeasterly in nature as our nor’easter forms this weekend. But in the interim, multiple high tide cycles on building onshore flow will gradually stack up water, especially in the back bays of the Jersey Shore.

High tide forecasts push tidal flooding risks into the moderate range by Wednesday for the Great Egg Harbor Bay, among other locations. (NOAA)

We’ll probably see the typical nuisance tidal flooding, along with some higher tide cycles by Wednesday or Thursday as things stack up.

Then there’s the nor’easter itself. What’s interesting about this is that it forms and then also moves rather slowly, meandering south of Long Island and New England. What’s also interesting about this is that the longer it stays over the water south of Long Island, the more likely it is to transition from a typical cold core nor’easter to a warmer core tropical system or hybrid system. For people on the ground, this definition doesn’t matter a whole lot, as the outcome will be the same either way. For those of us that study weather, this represents a fascinating case of potential tropical transition. We often discuss extratropical transition, where a hurricane or tropical storm devolves into a frontal-driven low pressure. In this case, the frontal-driven low may evolve into a tropical cyclone, potentially taking on enough characteristics to be classified as subtropical. How do we know this? Well, slow moving lows over the ocean always carry that risk in summer and early fall. But also, the models themselves are telling us this.

A cyclone phase diagram for the weekend storm showing a transition from non-tropical to possibly tropical. (Florida State University)

If you look at the map above and the “phase diagram” below, you can see we start the storm off the Southeast coast as probably not tropical. By the time the storm gets to the letter “Z” on the map, the phase diagram has evolved to show the system as almost a symmetric warm-core storm, or what would more than likely be considered at least subtropical, if not purely tropical.

Google’s WeatherNext, as well as multiple other models suggest risk of some tropical transition with the storm south of New England this weekend. (Weathernerds.org)

So what does this mean?

In terms of impacts, this means more than likely a raw weekend for southern New England, Long Island, and New Jersey. Windy, cool, and rainy. At this point, the most concerning impacts are from the potential for tidal flooding and/or beach erosion from rough surf. But I would continue to watch the wind risk, as well as the heavy rain risk closely too. As of right now, the potential exists for 1 to 3 inches of rainfall in parts of the region, along with 30 to 50 mph wind gusts on the coast. But it’s important to recognize that there is a high degree of uncertainty in the final storm track, as you can see above, with some models closer to land, and others farther away. This will determine if the risk for wind or heavy rain increases in the days ahead. Folks in southern New England, Long Island, and New Jersey should monitor the forecast this week for changes, especially those that live near the coast, sound, or bays.

More to come.

Maybe we can get something going in the Atlantic? Plus, an anatomy of another southern Connecticut flooding event

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In brief: Today we update on a disturbance east of Bermuda that is flailing a bit and has a low probability of development. We also take a deep dive into the flooding that hammered southwestern Connecticut on Sunday.

Tropical Atlantic

We begin today in the Atlantic, where the odds of open Atlantic tropical development have waxed and waned over the last few days, and in very 2025-26 fashion, they seem to be struggling mightily.

An early AM satellite view of the Atlantic disturbance east of Bermuda. (WeatherFront)

On satellite, you can see that this thing is not even challenging invest status right now, let alone heading for development. Over the next few days, the disturbance behind these clouds will drift west, inching toward Bermuda. Any development risk is very low and would almost certainly be very slow initially. Wind shear in the area is fairly low, but this disturbance is fairly broad in size and just does not seem really able to congeal around a tighter center in the modeling.

Google Deep Mind’s WeatherNext3 model has about a 20 percent or so chance of development. (Google)

Google’s WeatherNext model still does hold out some chance it can do something, with about 20 percent or so of the members of WeatherNext 3 showing development. The larger 1,000 member ensemble shows about 40 percent odds of development. It’s somewhat notable that the ensemble members that do develop this system in many cases make it a stronger one. So, I think the points here are: This is unlikely to impact land, the chances of development remain in the 20 to 40 percent range, and if it can develop, it has potential to become a stronger storm. We’ll keep watching for educational purposes.

What else?

You had to ask? The answer is nothing. Right now. I will say we are beginning to see some “noise” in various ensemble members that suggest something could be afoot near the Gulf or in the deep Atlantic at some point over the next 10 to 14 days, but there is nothing specific we can zero in on right now. So at this point, it’s the meteorological equivalent of uncorroborated information. We will keep watching and get more specific if and when the need arises.

Anatomy of another Connecticut flooding event

This summer was the wettest on record at the primary observing site in southwest Connecticut, in Bridgeport. By about an inch, 2026’s 21.24″ in Bridgeport bested 1972’s 20.23″ for wettest summer since 1948. We just added the 13th wettest day on record this past weekend, when Bridgeport recorded 4.25 inches of rain over the course of about 3 to 4 hours. Some parts of Fairfield County and east of New Haven were hit even harder.

Radar estimated rainfall from Sunday in southwestern Connecticut. (WeatherFront)

Stamford reported 7.47″ of rain, while just east near Darien, we had a 7.40″ report, and a 7.19″ report east of Norwalk in Westport, which was particularly hard hit. This is now the second significant flash flooding event since I moved here this summer. So you can say I am to blame, I suppose. But in all seriousness, this is not a laughing matter, and the Northeast has been a magnet for increasingly intense rainfall in recent years. 2026 is now the record holder in Bridgeport for number of hours that saw 1 inch of rain in an hour or more, at 5 of them. Folks on the Gulf Coast will read this and say “That’s cute,” but here in the Northeast, once you hit 1 inch per hour, that’s when serious problems can begin. Two of those hours came during the major January winter storm, another occurred on July 21st, a fourth on August 23rd, and the fifth on Sunday.

The two big ones on Sunday and back in July came as something of a surprise, in the sense that “Wow, I didn’t realize it rain that hard for that long.” But also in the sense that forecasts weren’t necessarily calling for 7 inches of rain. Even as the rain began Sunday morning, the NWS in New York City had called for locally higher amounts of 3 to 5 inches of rain in southern Connecticut. And a flood watch was indeed in place and had been for many hours prior to the onset of rain. The area was under a slight risk (level 2/4) for excessive rainfall.

(NWS New York City)

We have been under several flood watches this summer and 10 so far this year (compared to 5 in 2025 and 11 in 2024), so there may be an element of fatigue settling in, or the fact that it was on a weekend when folks were a little less tuned in may have also contributed to the surprising element. But short of underdoing the peak forecast totals a little, this was a pretty decent forecast. And there was good reason to believe that 5″+ totals were a distinct possibility in this area ahead of time.

Why is that? First, let’s look at the HREF/REFS details. The HREF probability matched mean product, which I have spoken highly of, showed 5 to 7 inches of rain possible over Long Island Sound on Saturday morning’s 12z run.

HREF Probability matched mean total rainfall from Saturday morning’s forecast. (NOAA SPC)

The max total of any one forecast in the ensemble did exceed 7 inches. Corroborating this was the REFS model which showed a healthy probability of 5 inches or more of rainfall over the same area highlighted above. So at the least, looking at this, some other data, and subsequent runs, it was evident that someone could see 5 inches or more of rainfall and they’d probably be adjacent to Long Island Sound.

You could have also looked at the NWS’s experimental urban rain rate dashboard (URRD) and seen at least some hints of a somewhat significant flooding event possible. While no point forecasts are available for southwest Connecticut, the Port Jefferson, Long Island location would have been helpful and instructive in this case.

A screenshot of the URRD from Saturday morning for Sunday’s rain event. (NOAA)

What can we pick out on here? Well, if we look at 6 hour rain totals, we can see that the ensemble probability of seeing a 6 hour average rainfall recurrence interval (ARI) of 10 years was significant. And even looking at the chart on the bottom left, there were several members of the plume in the 10, 25, or 50+ year ARI. The 10 year corresponds to about 3.4 to 4 inches over 6 hours. 50 to 100 year recurrence intervals would be between 5 and 6 inches. What ultimately fell was closer to a 200 to 500 year ARI. What does that mean in normal person language? It means that the rains that fell on Sunday typically only occur every 200 to 500 years in basically a static climate (based on NOAA Atlas 14 data which came out for New York and Connecticut over 10 years ago). We know that the climate is warming and able to hold more water vapor than when these ARIs were calculated, thus the true ARI is probably less than that by several years.

But the takeaway here? Modeling did an adequate job of predicting both the scope, coverage, and intensity of the rain if you were willing to buy in. Easier said than done sometimes, but I’d argue these tools do a pretty solid job in most instances. While the placement was imperfect, I can tell you as someone who lived in Houston for 14 years, it’s hard to do much better than that.

Scanning the Atlantic for any whiff of activity and still mostly struggling

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In brief: The Atlantic is in a very, very quiet place tropically, and that should mostly continue. There is some potential for an open Atlantic system out there in a week, which we discuss below.

It’s September 12, 2026, and for the hurricane season to date, in terms of accumulated cyclone energy (ACE), the Atlantic is running at 7 percent of normal to date. Not for the entire season, for the season so far. We’ve blown past 1915’s 2.53 ACE to sit at 4.4. So, as far as we know, it’s not the least active ever. But in the modern era, we’re not even close.

Accumulated cyclone energy today is currently obscenely low for the season. (Colorado State)

1983’s 17.4 ACE is the modern value that’s being challenged. One storm can blow this out, but at this point, we’re sitting rarefied air.

It is literally the opposite in the Eastern Pacific which is sitting at over 190 percent of normal activity to date. If the season ended today, it would be the 12th most active on record. Thus, we’ll be challenging some big years.

So where do we go from here? The next item to watch will be a potential disturbance in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, several hundred miles east of Bermuda in about 5 to 7 days. Models are somewhat mixed on exactly how things go here, but Google’s Deep Mind model is fairly aggressive in developing this one.

A number of Google Deep Mind ensemble members develop a system in the open Atlantic near or east of Bermuda in about a week or so. (Google)

Obviously we can’t say a whole lot about this right now given the model dispersion of outcomes and the lack of a genuine disturbance to really track at this point. But it does appear that whatever this is won’t bother the Gulf or Caribbean. However, folks in Bermuda may want to keep tabs on this. Some of the model ensemble members do develop this one a little more aggressively than others. So perhaps this is a candidate for our first true textbook storm of the season. It’s not abnormal to see stronger storms in the higher latitudes of the Atlantic in El Nino summers. Let’s see where this goes.

Beyond that, there is next to nothing in modeling to zero in on over the next 2 weeks. Generally speaking, if something were to develop, it would probably have to be courtesy of a dying cold front in the Gulf of Mexico or off the Southeast coast. We don’t see any meaningful sign of that right now.

Enjoy the weekend!