Beryl hits Nantucket

Tropical Storm Beryl moved rapidly over Nantucket Island, Massachusetts this morning, bringing gusty winds and heavy rain, but little damage. Seas reached 19 feet offshore Nantucket this morning, and large pounding waves of six to ten feet will cause minor beach erosion problems for the remainder of the day. The peak wind this morning measured at Nantucket Airport was 33 mph, gusting to 44 mph. The pressure bottomed out at 1001 mb at 3am. The Nantucket Shoals buoy reported peak 10-minute average winds of 41 mph with a gust to 56 mph. The heaviest rain stayed offshore, and only about an inch of rain fell on Nantucket. Beryl was a typical July tropical storm--a weak system good for testing our preparedness for when the real action starts in August.


Figure 1. Total rainfall from Beryl estimated from the Boston radar.

Beryl missed mainland Massachusetts, and is now on its way to a landfall in Nova Scotia. The storm is well on its way toward becoming a regular extratropical storm, and should have only a minor impact on Canada. Beryl is the first July tropical storm to hit New England since Tropical Storm Bertha of 1996.

Elsewhere in the tropics
There are no other disturbed areas of weather in the tropical Atlantic worthy of mention today. There are indications that the region between Africa and the Lesser Antilles Islands may become more favorable for tropical storm formation next week, though. There is less Saharan dust pushing off the coast of Africa, and both the GFS and Canadian models are suggesting a tropical storm could form by the middle of next week off the coast of Africa. However, there will still be a lot of wind shear present, and the chances of a significant storm developing and holding together are questionable. The basic weather pattern we've seen all of June and July shows no sign of changing, and significant hurricane activity appears likely to hold off until the usual time we're used to--early August.

I'll be back with an update Saturday.
Jeff Masters