Two tropical storms in the Atlantic

After a rather calm month of August, the Atlantic basin came back to life with two systems named on the first 2 days of the month! Late Friday night, the National Hurricane Center designated the tropical wave we’ve been tracking for about a week now with a name – Earl. Earl is currently since Saturday morning located just north of the Leeward Islands. It is expected to head west over the weekend and then take a turn to the northeast.

Elsewhere in the Atlantic, we saw our first hurricane – Danielle form on Friday! Fortunately, like Earl, Danielle is expected to stay away from the United States and, for now, alternate between tropical storm and hurricane strength over the weekend.

Danielle is the first Atlantic Basin hurricane since October 2021 – a streak of 332 days. This is the 3rd longest sequence recorded since the era of satellites using a Julian calendar, so we don’t have to take leap years into account.

So – two systems to keep tabs on this Labor Day weekend, but thankfully both don’t seem to be too much of a concern. Let us follow up – you enjoy the great weather this weekend!

If you’re hanging out in eastern Virginia or North Carolina this weekend, the weather is great. We will see partly to mostly sunny skies every day. Chances of rain look low – with only a slight chance of showers as we head into late Sunday, mostly in NE NC.

For Labor Day Monday we will be in the 80s with a small chance of showers as well, mostly late in the day.

On Tuesday, a front approaches our area then stops. This will give us a decent chance of scattered showers, maybe a few thunderstorms on Tuesday and Wednesday. We could use a little rain. August was the third driest on record at Norfolk Airport. The other spots are doing well, but throughout the region a good dose of rain wouldn’t hurt.

I hope you are having a good weekend!
Meteorologist Ricky Matthews

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