After Devastating the Southeastern United States, Is Helene Coming to Canada?
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Satellite Image of tropical storm Helene from September 27th at 10:21am EDT, Courtesy of Colorado state university.
After making landfall as a major Category 4 Hurricane late last night and its subsequent path of destruction across Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, many in Ontario are wondering if we will feel the impacts of Helene closer to home over the weekend. Helene has since weakened to a tropical storm, but it remains a massive storm with far reaching impacts.
Helene has made its way well inland over the past 12 hours, with its low pressure centre currently situated over the Southern Appalachians. Despite still being located so far south, light cloud cover from the storm has made its way into Southwestern Ontario and the Niagara Region. This cloud cover has been responsible for a fabulous display of sun halos across the region this morning!
The storm will continue to gradually track to the northwest this afternoon before stalling out over the Tennessee Valley overnight, where it will encounter and merge with another low. The lack of motion in the storm will unfortunately bring even more rainfall and further exacerbate the extreme flooding and landslide situation already being seen throughout the Southern Appalachians and bring that into the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys.
In Ontario, the cloud cover from Helene will push deeper into the province this afternoon and light rain can be expected in Southwestern Ontario, from Windsor through London and into Niagara, beginning overnight tonight and continuing through the weekend. Much of the rest of Southern Ontario can expect a dreary weekend as the cloud cover settles in.
The storm will actually travel in a loop, known as the Fujiwhara Effect, while it merges with the second low and by Sunday, it is expected to finally start moving eastward towards the Atlantic and then northeastward along the Eastern Seaboard, where it expected to begin to dissipate.
Forecast Tracks from different models for Helene, Courtesy of Tomer Burg.
