By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Hurricane Irma is bearing down on Florida, but it is too early to say how the storm might impact New Jersey, the National Weather Service said Thursday.
Irma, now following a westward path, is expected to turn north and west late into the weekend and early next week, said Lance Franck, meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Mount Holly station.
“And so at that point, we’ll have a better idea where the storm’s going to go from there,” he said Thursday. “Until it makes that re-curvature, … it’s just early to say exactly where it’s going to go.”
In the short term, Irma is expected to bring higher waves and rip currents at the Jersey Shore, starting this week, he said. At the moment, there is a moderate risk for rip currents.
“But what we can’t determine at this point is any further impacts in terms of wind and rain,” he said.
Robert Gregory, Princeton’s director of emergency management, said Thursday that he is planning on the town “possibly” getting a lot of rain next week. He expressed concern, too, about Hurricane Jose, a storm following Irma.
“If Irma tracks up the coast, it could actually keep Jose off the coast. But if it goes inland, it could pull Jose into the East Coast,” Gregory said.
In the meantime, parts of Florida, Miami Dade and Monroe counties, are under mandatory evacuation orders, while the NFL’s Miami Dolphins home game scheduled for Sunday has been postponed until Nov.19.
Gov. Chris Christie, on Wednesday, announced that more than 100 members of the New Jersey National Guard would be deployed to Florida to help with “this emergency response and rescue mission.”
