Near-hurricane-strength storm targets Charlotte area, Hurricanbe Center maps show
A tropical disturbance expected in the Gulf of Mexico could bring rains to the Charlotte area by the end of the work week, a National Weather Service meteorologist said Saturday.
Weather models were increasingly confident of precipitation for Friday or Saturday in Charlotte, meteorologist Jake Wimberley of the NWS office in Greer, South Carolina, told The Charlotte Observer late Saturday afternoon.
In a hazardous weather outlook bulletin Monday morning, the NWS office said: “A tropical system is expected to strengthen over the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday and Thursday and will likely impact our area towards the end of the week.
“This system could produce excessive rainfall and gusty winds across the western Carolinas.”
The Charlotte area could see even more rain if the disturbance combines with a wet weather system from the Midwest, Wimberley said.
The disturbance has a 90% chance of becoming a tropical depression as it moves northward across the Gulf of Mexico by week’s end, National Hurricane Center officials said in a bulletin at 8 a.m. Monday.
AccuWeather, the private weather service, predicted the storm will become a hurricane before making landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast.
AccuWeather maps on Monday morning showed the center of the storm tracking west of the Carolinas, with a wide swath of outer rain bands hitting the Charlotte area and the mountains around 8 p.m. Friday.
A tropical depression packs winds up to 38 mph, according to the NWS.
Guidance models show no winds with the system, however, Wimberley said.
A tropical wave, meanwhile, is expected to move off the African coast Sunday or Monday and possibly become a tropical depression over the eastern or central tropical Atlantic, the Hurricane Center reported Saturday with no further information as to the predicted track of the storm.
A tropical wave is “an elongated area of relatively low pressure” in the atmosphere that can become a tropical cyclone, according to the NWS.
Charlotte weather forecast
Fall began Sunday, but it sure won’t feel like it at the beginning of the week, according to the NWS Charlotte forecast at 8 a.m. Monday.
The NWS predicts highs of 81 on Monday, 82 on Tuesday, 83 on Wednesday and 80 on Thursday.
Severe weather is possible Monday and Tuesday afternoons and night, the NWS said.
“The main hazard from any thunderstorm that develops will becloud-to-ground lightning, although a few storms could become strong to severe and produce damaging wind gusts,” according to an NWS hazardous weather outlook bulletin early Monday.
Temperatures should slightly cool later in the week, with predicted highs of 76 on Friday and 77 on Saturday, the forecast showed.
This story was originally published September 21, 2024 at 5:54 PM with the headline "Near-hurricane-strength storm targets Charlotte area, Hurricanbe Center maps show."