PTC9 to Get Organized Today and Tonight, Pose Major Hurricane Risk for the Southeast Thursday and Friday

Potentail Tropical Cyclone Nine is still in the Caribbean Sea this morning. Showers and thunderstorms with it are still disorganized now, but that will begin to change today and a more organized circulation is expected to take shape. Once that happens we will quickly see the system become Tropical Storm Helene and then Hurricane Helene as the storm center moves north into and across the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

The forcast tracks by most of the computer models have been consistant on showing Hurricane Helene's center making landfall somewhere near the Big Bend area of Florida, then tracking quickly north across Georgia. The models have fluctuated on strength of the hurricane from run to run, but the most likley scenerio is for Helene to become a major hurricane, meaning category 3 or higher, prior to landfall. Here is the latest official track.

Keep in mind the cone in the forecast track is showing where the center of the storm could track. The hurricane is expected to become a large storm with impacts extending far out from the center. It is also expected to be moving at a fast forward speed when it makes US landfall. That will allow higher winds to make it farther inland, and it will also make widepread crazily high rain amounts unlikley. Here are the maximum wind gust forecasts from the GFS and the European. The GFS is the stronger of the two. I share them to give you and idea of what the possiblities are, and what we need to prepare for.

Gusts in the Eurpean forecast range would result in numerous power outages across Georgia and South Carolina, and the GFS intensity would make them much more widespread.

Rain totals will be enough to cause flash flooding, but the quick movement will help keep totals less than with a slow moving storm. Here is the GFS rain total forecast.

And here is the flash flood risk forecast from NOAA.

The forcast timing of tropical storm force winds has tropical storm force winds moving into south Georgia on Thursday. The worst for Georgia and South Carolina will be Thursday night into Friday.