Last Update on Delta and 7 Day Outlook

October 8, 2020

This will likely be my last post about Hurricane Delta. The storm is strengthening and is expected to make landfall tomorrow evening as a strong category 2 or category 3 hurricane. Unfortunately it looks like it will heavily impact the people that are still just beginning to recover from Laura.

Below is the severe weather outlook through Sunday morning. The details will change over the next few days, but expect there to be damaging wind and tornado threats as Delta approaches the coast and heads inland. No specific hazard probabilities are given for day 3 (Saturday) but I expect we'll see 2-5% wind and tornado areas when the day 2 outlook is issued for Saturday late tonight. The threat is expected to diminish as Delta's wind weakens but we could see this expand into Tennessee for Sunday overnight to Monday morning but that's unclear at this point.

The other threat from Delta will be excessive rain and you can see how that is expected to evolve below. I think most of the main hazards, rain and severe weather, will stay to the west of our area.

Since I'm into animations today, here is how other weather features will progress through next week. Most notably (other than Delta of course) is the front that moves through early in the week and also at the end you can just see the next front coming down through the midwest on Thursday. We'll probably see a little bump of cooler air with the first front midweek but it is the second that has a better chance of bringing in cool air around next weekend. Below the fronts animation is our expected rainfall for the next seven days and then the seven day total, you'll see that not much rain is expected once Delta clears out.

Long term in the tropics there are still a few model signals showing possible development in the Caribbean late next week. Again there's nothing definite to speak of, but hurricane season is not yet over.

I'll let you know if the severe weather threat starts to look more concerning, otherwise I'll send out the next update Tuesday or Wednesday. For those that don't know or don't remember, all of these emails are posted to my blog: https://www.deepsouthwx.com/ with links posted on Twitter (@DeepSouthWXU) and Facebook. There's also weather links, radar, and many of the maps I used today on there. When I get to it I'll add some more stuff.

Have a good end of the week and a great weekend.

Chris