Irene: Cat 3 Now

Sorry for being a little later today with the post everybody. As mentioned Irene is now a major hurricane with winds sustained at 115 mph making it a category 3 storm. This is going to be a major player in Carolina weather over the next few days. As I've been saying, we may not actually see a landfall with this system in NC. I feel the actual center of the storm may stay just off shore. However this sytem is going to be so close there probably wouldn't be much difference, except in the amount of area affected.
There is the latest GFS for Saturday afternoon. You can see it puts the center of the storm just off shore from the outer banks. This is going to be a major problem for the eastern part of the state. Potential wind damage, heavy rain, and of course coastal erosion will be a big issue. If there is one positive it would be that with the center offshore, the biggest tornado threat will stay east of land as well. However what's interesting is you can see the heaviest rain forecast on the west side of the center, which is opposite of what we normally see with tropical systems where the east side is the strongest.

Now in terms of weather in the Triad . . . you're probably not going to see a whole lot should this model pan out. Windy conditions will be the main issue. Perhaps some wind gusts strong enough to cause minor damage, but that's probably about it. It's possible rain could spread far enough west with some of the outer bands, but on the outskirts of tropical systems you get a lot of subsidence, or sinking air. This would mean hot and dry conditions just outside the rain bands.

As always I'll come back later this morning with an update on the latest hurricane center forecast.