What can Atlantic Canada expect in terms of impacts from Hurricane Ernesto?

AccuWeather

Ernesto will be weakening, with a much broader wind field, by the time it affects Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, but forecasters say it will still have impacts.

Transcript

00:00I do want to bring in our Canadian expert meteorologist Brett Anderson and you know Brett

00:07when you look at Ernesto and you look at the cloud structure here the one thing that you notice is

00:13that it certainly doesn't look as healthy as what we've seen over the last 24 hours there it is and

00:19as I put this into motion you can kind of see it lifting to the north here so it certainly is

00:23starting to get stretched out and that is something you see a lot with these hurricanes Brett as they

00:29move in the North Atlantic. That's right because it's interacting with stronger jet stream winds

00:34to the north because we typically see the strongest winds as you go farther north this

00:38time of year so that's what's happening seeing a little bit of wind shear with that and as this

00:43continues to move northward we're going to continue to see even more stretching as it moves over

00:48cooler waters and we've probably seen a peak in the strength of this system already now that it's

00:53going to continue to move farther north. Yeah and you know what as these systems move north

00:58you know I think of a lot of people are surprised that while they tend to lose wind intensity

01:05because of the wind shear in the cooler waters Brett they could still have a huge impact on

01:11Atlantic Canada. Yeah because what's going to happen is this goes into a transition basically

01:17losing tropical characteristics moving basically turning into more of like a winter type storm

01:23the wind field expands and when the wind field expands we get more impact and some of that

01:28impact is going to reach all the way up into Nova Scotia on Monday with some wind gusts perhaps

01:33over 40 miles per hour some rough seas as well and then the strong impacts are going to certainly

01:38reach Newfoundland looks like by Monday night where we are expecting 60 to 80 mile per hour

01:44even though the center of the storm is going to be still offshore. Yeah and when you feel again

01:49let's take a look at that structure again of Ernesto you could see how it's really starting

01:55to stretch out and starting the weekend so this is something that we mentioned we see a lot Brett

02:01really quickly here let's talk about some of the some of the more infamous hurricanes that have

02:10struck eastern Canada here over the last several years here in fact here's the graphic and you know

02:18we're talking off air the benchmark for at least Halifax was Hurricane Juan that was back in 2003

02:27talk about the impacts that Nova Scotia and Halifax felt with that storm. Yeah that was a

02:33devastating storm tremendous wind storm surge into the Halifax harbor and they saw wind gusts

02:41over 100 miles per hour widespread damage that was just a direct hit the problem with that one was

02:47Juan was still strengthening as it was moving north of 40 degrees north which was unusual

02:52and it was moving fast so it didn't give time for it to really weaken as it got up into those colder

02:58waters closer to Halifax and then we have Fiona back in 2022 farther east not as much impact but

03:07for eastern Nova Scotia we saw wind gusts in excess of 100 miles per hour and again some

03:12significant storm surge. And of course we are tracking Ernesto going southeast of Nova Scotia

03:19what's the benchmark storm for I should say southeast of Newfoundland what's the benchmark

03:26storm for Newfoundland? Yeah it's a Hurricane Igor back in 2010 really a big rainmaker for

03:35the Avalon Peninsula in southeastern Newfoundland we had over nine inches of rainfall tremendous

03:40amount of flooding with that storm main reason being because it interacted with another front

03:45to the north causing all that heavy rainfall in this case we're not going to have that type of

03:50interaction so we're expecting more like two to four inches of rain across the Avalon Peninsula

03:56again especially late Monday and Monday night so it will be flooding but not nearly as significant

04:01as what we saw with Igor. All right Accuweather's meteorologist Brett Anderson our Canadian expert

04:09Brett thanks for the information.

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