DARTMOUTH – There's a 50/50 chance of hurricane Earl making landfall in Nova Scotia and that's good enough for the Canadian Hurricane Centre to give plenty of advance notice to the public.
"This is a storm that has a potential to be very problematic," Chris Fogarty, program supervisor for the Canadian Hurricane Centre, said on Wednesday afternoon.
Centre models indicate that Earl will hit Nova Scotia Saturday morning packing the punch of a Category 1 hurricane or a high-end tropical storm.
Fogarty said it's a bit early to make accurate landfall predictions given the fact that Earl is still between two-and-a-half and three days away from landfall. He said the predicted landfall time could be off by 12 hours either way.
"There's a range of scenarios.… It could make landfall from eastern Maine to Cape Breton basically," Fogarty said. "Most of the computer models show (it making landfall) in the western part of Nova Scotia."
He said winds will be strongest to the east of the storm track while the west side of the track will face the heaviest rains.
Winds could gust as high as 140 km/h inland and those factors will be narrowed down as the storm approaches.
"On Thursday we are definitely going to see a refinement in certainty. That's when we start talking about winds speeds and rainfalls," Fogarty said.
Fogarty said the region's higher than normal water temperatures could give Earl a boost as it nears Nova Scotia.
"It is moving into waters similar (in temperature) to where it was born. There is the likelihood of it retaining strength."
He said that when Juan ripped through the province in late September of 2003 water temperatures were cooler than current ones.
"They are two degrees higher this time around."
Overland Fogarty predicts that Earl will lose some of its punch.
"There will be some diminishing of maximum winds as it crosses Nova Scotia."
