As Hurricane Florence tracks toward East Coast, Philadelphia should take a deep breath
It's a certainty that this will be a frightful week along the North and
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But as menacing as Hurricane Florence might appear on satellite and radar images -- and this is going to be a protracted drama all week -- ultimately far-larger weather systems will determine its course, and it still has hundreds of miles of ocean and atmospheric chaos to navigate before it approaches land.
While it had regrown into a Category 4 hurricane with peak winds of 140 mph late Monday, the hurricane center said,
All of which means it is too soon to have an idea of what
"Give it two days from now," said
Meteorologists and the computers they consult for guidance were reasonably confident Monday that
Despite the uncertainty, it would not hurt for people around here to assemble emergency kits and prepare for potential power outages, said
No matter where
This year's record rainfall, enhanced by downpours in recent weeks, adds to the threat, since "that area is saturated," Slocum said. Trees, which are adapted to prevailing winds from the west, are especially vulnerable to strong winds from the east, he said. It's possible that whatever is left of
The post-landfall fate of
Slocum noted that if
In terms of size, that steering high-pressure system is 20 to 30 times larger than
Winds circulate clockwise around high centers, and those easterly winds to the south of the center have caused
But a new high pressure system building over the
Where a hurricane makes landfall can make all the difference in impacts. Slocum said. Take last year's Hurricane Irma, which caused close to
As for
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