Hurricane Michael: What NJ needs to know

MICHAEL HAS GOTTEN STRONGER. CLICK OR TAP HERE FOR THE LATEST NEW JERSEY FORECAST.

Hurricane Michael, with its sights set on a devastating strike in the Florida panhandle, is unlikely to pass over New Jersey as an organized storm, according to the latest update from the National Hurricane Center.

However, we're still in line for a very rainy Thursday and Friday morning here in the Garden State and Michael could still make that worse, even if it never sniffs the Delaware Bay.

Michael will displace a layer of moisture in the South, pushing it northward into our region where it will commingle with a strong cold front set to arrive on Thursday. That's a recipe for a significant amount of rain, according to the National Weather Service.

"For south Jersey, it looks like about 2 to 3 inches, about 1 to 2 inches in central Jersey and 1 to 1½ inches in North Jersey on Thursday and Friday," said Alex Staarmann, a meteorologist at the NWS's Mount Holly office. "There will be isolated areas with heavier amounts."

Of course, there is still potential for remnants from the now-hurricane to break off and float over New Jersey. Or the trajectory of the storm could move just slightly to the north and the tropical system could brush the southern half of the state before bounding off into the Atlantic Ocean.

In short, stay tuned. 

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Where is Michael headed?

Hurricane Florence, the most consequential storm of the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season so far, took two weeks to get from the coast of Senegal to Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina.

Michael, however, formed on Saturday and is expected to slam into the Gulf Coast on Wednesday afternoon near Panama City, Florida, strafe the Southeast and then exit into the Atlantic Ocean near the Virginia and North Carolina before sunrise on Friday.

“If someone had asked me five days ago, ‘Hey I want to go to Tallahassee, am I going to get hit by a hurricane?’ I would have said sure, you’re good to go,” Colorado State University meteorologist Phil Klotzbach told the Miami Herald on Monday. “Florence felt like it was out there forever, but this storm came out of nowhere.”

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How powerful is this storm?

As of the latest reading, Michael's sustained winds were measured at 110 mph, which qualifies the storm as a Category 2 hurricane. 

The storm will continue to build strength Tuesday and earn Category 3 status, meaning sustained winds of more than 110 mph, before it makes landfall on Wednesday afternoon.

Conditions on the Florida panhandle will begin to deteriorate late tonight. See how residents are preparing in the video at the top of the page.

The NWS in Tallahassee is warning residents there of "potentially catastrophic" circumstances, including a storm surge that could be damaging from Pensacola all the way to Tampa-St.Petersburg. Long-lasting power outages, tornadoes and flash flooding are all possibilities.

AccuWeather is forecasting $15 billion in damages from the storm.

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What's the risk for New Jersey?

Here, Michael's impact will be much more muted. 

The storm will lose power as it is deprived of its fuel, the warm Gulf waters, as it passes over land.

"The cyclone should weaken significantly as it crosses the southeastern United States, then it should re-intensify over the western Atlantic as it undergoes extratropical transition (on Friday)," reads the latest guidance from the National Hurricane Center.

In addition to the heavy rain here that Michael may contribute to, the storm could create a coastal flooding hazard if it passes by close enough.

"The farther south (Michael) is the less impact we will see with regards to coastal flooding," Staarmann said.

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Russ Zimmer: 732-557-5748, razimmer@app.com, @russzimmer