Idalia looks like she will make landfall tomorrow at about the spot that was expected before it even had a name. Initial model guidance wasn’t as aggressive on the storm’s intensification as the NHC was, so credit as always to the meteorologists, but here is the good news:

The Big Bend are of Florida is fairly sparsely populated. Storm surge, thanks to the geography of the region, will be quite high for Cedar Key north and westward, but there aren’t a lot of beachfront communities in the area. Not to say there aren’t any, but the most costly part of this storm will not be the surge, even though it will be impressive.

Instead, my biggest concern is the flash flooding that may come to places like Live Oak, Valdosta and Wenatchee. Sporadic tornadoes are also a big concern, as they usually are with landfalling hurricanes.

Idalia is a healthy storm, and will be memorable for those it impacts. The only reason this storm isn’t more fearsome is because it found the part of the Florida Coast that hasn’t been fully developed.

Franklin is a big beautiful storm, with a well developed eye that is mercifully spinning well away from most major interests, save for the air and sea interests of the North Atlantic. He is not getting much attention, because he isn’t going to make landfall anywhere, and will merely work to reroute aircraft and ships.

All that said, he is causing a trough in the mid-Atlantic to slow down, and the rain showers in the Virginias over the weekend dumped enough rain to cause some flash flooding over both states. As Franklin keeps moving, ultimately so will these showers. With luck, Idalia will also steer clear of the region.

Idalia has formed off the Yucatan. There aren’t any major changes vs. what we were looking at yesterday, save for a little bit of acceleration. Expect the storm to landfall on Wednesday south of Tallahassee as a strong tropical storm.

UPDATE 9pm – The latest forecast from the NHC has Idalia landfalling at a Category 2 level. That seems a little high to me, but ultimately, what is most important is that the storms projected landfall is at a pretty low density part of the state. Let’s hope that’s how it ends up.

UPDATE 1115PM – No big changes to Idalia, but the threat for for tropical weather will cut off the inflow to the Midwest. Things should be drier mid to late week in the Mississippi Valley

The first two tropical features to impact the US this year, Hilary and Howard, were well handled. Tropical Depression 10, which is presently hanging out on the coast of the Yucatan, near Cancun and Cozumel, is expected to organize and move slowly to the northeast. The time spent over the Gulf will allow the storm to become a low end hurricane before it moves into Apallachee Bay in the middle of next week,

Much remains to be seen. Fortunately, this isn’t expected to be a major hurricane, but any tropical storm presents it’s own problems.

Update, Sunday 1230 AM – One important factor for TD10’s impact on the States is that it is not forecast to move off shore fully intact, which means it won’t reemerge after the initial landfall. Heavy rain and isolated tornadoes are still going to be a possibility into the Carolinas through the end of next week.

Those are just wind farms showing up on radar

After a year without August storms, and for weeks talking about how quiet the North Atlantic was. we now have three named features in the Atlantic, including Tropical Storm Harold on the Texas Coast, Tropical Storm Franklin south of Hispaniola, and Post Tropical Storm Gert, which is already winding down.

Harold is projected to keep moving due west towards Arizona after landfalling around Padre Island later this morning The Southwest, of course, is already bouncing back from Hilary and likely to see well over their normal allotment of rainfall.

Franklin is moving north, which means rain and potential for flooding across Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Surely not areas that will withstand flash flooding well, but at least Franklin presently isn’t a particularly windy storm, nor will it linger over the island. He may become a hurricane over the north Atlantic, passing near Bermuda.

Gert isn’t necessarily done, but she will wobble around the northern Lesser Antilles for a few days. After that, it’s still a mystery.

These aren’t going to be storms for the record books or anything like that, but business is definitely picking up.