DARTMOUTH – Hurricane Earl's most recent projected track shows it making landfall somewhere along the Bay of Fundy.
Chris Fogarty, program supervisor for the Canadian Hurricane Centre, said the current track shows the hurricane coming up the bay, but he cautioned it could make landfall as far east as Guysborough County or as far west as central Maine. He said Saint John, N.B., is a likely target area.
"There is still that area of uncertainty, there's a range of possible tracks," he said from Dartmouth. "I've seen in past storms they could behave interestingly."
He said there's about a 60 per cent chance that Earl will still be a Category 1 hurricane when it comes ashore.
Fogarty said they expect the hurricane to come ashore a bit later than the 9 a.m. Saturday landfall predicted earlier this week, with a plus or minus six-hour window.
With the latest track in mind Fogarty said western mainland Nova Scotia would experience the highest winds. Heaviest rains are expected to the west of the storm.
He said that wind strengths are still an uncertain factor.
"Winds with these types of storms are the challenging things to predict."
If the hurricane tracks up the Bay of Fundy those colder waters would act to lessen wind speeds, said Fogarty.
"If it moves west over a larger area of cooler water, it's possible it may not be as strong. The intensity of the storm could be lessening.… Colder waters could act as a buffer to ease wind speeds."
Fogarty said water temperature is 21C south of Halifax and a few degrees cooler in the Bay of Fundy.
Bands of heavy rain could proceed the storm by a few hours and winds could last up to four hours. Fogarty predicted a period between three to five hours of very high winds and rains. He said the heavy rains may arrive ahead of the strongest winds.
"It will be moving along quite quickly as it move across the Maritimes."
The hurricane centre's Thursday afternoon advisory said to expect rainfall amounts of 40 to 70 mm to the left of Earl's track with winds as high as 130 km/h to the right of the track on Saturday.
Hurricane watches were posted Thursday afternoon for Queens, Shelburne, Yarmouth and Digby counties with tropical storm watches issued for Halifax, Annapolis, Kings, Hants and Lunenburg counties as well as the Fundy side of Colchester and Cumberland counties.
At the time of those watches Earl was moving almost due north at 30 km/h.
