Hermine Update: Entire Coast From North Carolina To New England Still Under Threat Big Time

Damage from Hermine's storm surge in Florida on
Friday. Many coastal homes and structures from North
Carolina to New England could face damage
like this as Hermine continues to spin off
the Mid-Atlantic coast. 

Hermine, whether you want to call it a hurricane, a tropical storm or some weird big regular storm, continues to cause massive problems today and will continue spreading these coastal problems more and more toward the north over the rest of the Labor Day weekend.

A tropical storm watch has been upgrade to a warning for the New York City area, New Jersey, Long Island and the southern New England coast all the way to Watch Hill, Rhode Island.

A new tropical storm watch is up further north and east along the New England coast to include all of Cape Cod and the islands. 

The National Hurricane Center is still warning of "life-threatening inundations" for storm surges along the coast from the Hampton Roads area of Virginia (ongoing now!) all the way up through New Jersey.

Storm surges along the coast could reach five feet, near record highs in some spots. I don't think this will be quite as bad as Superstorm Sandy, but bad enough.

Plus, we have to get more people out of the way than we did with Sandy. More people are near the shore on Labor Day weekend than the time of year Sandy hit, which was late October in 2012.

If you're on the Jersey Shore, or Long Island, or down in Delaware and Maryland and Virginia and near the coast and they tell you to leave. Do it! The life you save might be your own, goes the cliché and it's true here.

You'll also want to leave before the tides and storm surges start coming in, because the escape roads are usually the first to go underwater or get washed away.

There already has been quite a bit of storm surge in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, you know, the area around Norfolk and Virginia Beach, reports the Virginia Pilot.


Storm surge flooding from Hermine in southeastern Virginia
this morning. Photo by Kimberly Pierceall, Virginia Pilot 

As I said before, Hermine isn't really a tropical storm anymore, but ignore that distinction. It's actually gotten stronger in terms of winds and waves and that kind of thing.

Gusts I'm coastal Duck, North Carolina reached 84 mph this morning as Hermine re-entered the Atlantic Ocean from the southeastern United States.

Hermine is still heading out to sea, and will end up just offshore. She'll meander and do loop de loops off of New Jersey, possibly getting very close to the coast at some point Sunday or Monday.

And it'll keep strengthening into Monday and probably be a hurricane or at least hurricane strength Sunday and/or Monday.

The storm surges, the winds and the rains will hug the coast, and you won't have to go too far inland in New Jersey and elsewhere in the East for the impacts to be much less dangerous and extreme.

If you're, say, 25 miles inland, it might be gusty and cloudy and sometimes rainy, but I don't think there will be tremendous damage away from the coasts.

But the Northeast coastline is so built up, there's a lot of property along the shore to get trashed.

The forecast track into early next week for Hermine has trended a little north, which is why southern New England is now under a tropical storm watch.

Up here at my perch in Vermont, we're still expecting few impacts from Hermine. Since it's going a little further north, many of us will gradually find ourselves under more and more high, thin clouds as we head toward Sunday and especially Monday.

Far southern Vermont might even get a few showers out of this, maybe, but don't hold your breath on that one.