StormTracker8: Erin churns up the coast bringing high surf and gusty winds

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) – Tropical storm warnings are in effect along the Virginia Coastline and Outer Banks through Friday as hurricane Erin turns up the East Coast and brings rough surf and high winds along the coast.

We will have a mixture of clouds and sunshine to mostly cloudy skies for this evening but then more clouds will roll back in overnight tonight as Erin slides up the East Coast. It will become breezy by tomorrow morning with our overnight lows in the lower 70s.

The center of Hurricane Erin will pass more than 300 miles to the southeast of Richmond Virginia staying way out in the ocean during Thursday however it will spread clouds across the region early in the morning and the breeze will kick up and become gusty at times through the afternoon.

Most of central Virginia will have gusty winds between 15 to 25 miles per hour throughout the day. Some of our far eastern coastal communities could have a couple of showers from the extreme outer bands of Erin but most of us will stay dry. During the afternoon, as Erin begins to pull out to the east, we will see breaks of sun and for some turn over to partly sunny skies later in the day. It will be a mild day with highs around 80.

Friday will be a beautiful day with mostly sunny skies and highs in the lower 80s.

Saturday will also be very nice with highs near 85 under mostly sunny skies.

Sunday will start off partly sunny however a cold front will approach the region during the afternoon and that will bring us the risk of a couple of isolated thunderstorms later in the day. Our high temperatures will Top out in the middle 80s.

Partly sunny skies will be with us Monday and the humidity will begin to drop with highs near 85.

As we turn our attention to the middle to end of the week, we will see mostly sunny skies for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with highs in the upper 70s to near 80.

As of 5:00 p.m. Hurricane Erin has Winds of 110 mph making it a category 2 on the Saffir Simpson scale. Erin is moving to the north at 14 mph and will start to turn to the northeast in the next 24 hours. There will be some minor fluctuations in the strength of Erin and in fact it could become a category 3 storm by later this evening and tonight. However, once it pulls farther to the east away from the East Coast it will rapidly diminish in intensity as it works its way over colder ocean waters.

There are two other tropical waves that we are watching currently. The first one is in the central Atlantic just to the east of the Caribbean islands and this has a 60% chance of developing in the next 60 days. However, the trend is for this to move to the Northwest and stay away from any of the islands.

The second area that we are watching is closer to the coast of Africa out in the Eastern Atlantic and this has a 40% chance of developing in the next 2 to 7 days.