Florence may not make landfall in North Carolina. Does it matter?
More than seven days after meteorologists first started tracking what would become Hurricane Florence, the weather pattern we have been advertising as “extremely unusual” finally threw another curveball at us. Forecast models over the past 24 hours have come into better agreement on the idea that Hurricane Florence will put on the brakes as she approaches the Carolina coast, coming to nearly a complete halt and turning southwesterly along the coast.
In fact, some models suggest that the storm may not even make an official landfall in North Carolina at all – instead, it will float southwestward toward South Carolina before weakening and moving inland. This has left the public with a lot of questions. What is going on? What does this mean, and should we believe it? Does this matter in terms of overall impacts? Does this new change in the track of Florence really matter for those in its path? The answers aren’t simple, but they are there – and forecast models have been giving us clues all along.