East Coast Update: 28 Foot Waves

Here's the East Coast storm as seen through the eyes of AccuWeather.com RadarPlus at 7 AM Eastern Time:

| ENLARGE WITH ALTERNATE RADAR COLORS

RadarPlus is a great tool to analyze the current weather in full-color. The image above shows pressure as a color gradient from blue (low) to red (high). Underneath that are arrows indicating surface wind speeds and directions, and an Infrared satellite image. You can see that the pressure in the system is much lower this morning than yesterday morning, and that the elongated low pressure system is essentially making landfall in Onslow county North Carolina this morning (check out an all-night radar loop).

If you look at the winds however (RadarPlus uses the WRF Forecast Model Zero-Hour Analysis Sustained Winds) they are concentrated in the northeast quadrant of the low pressure system.

That's a 51-mph sustained wind printed at Hatteras and sustained winds into the upper 20's extend nearly to Long Island. Diamond Shoals (Buoy 41025), which is offshore from Hatteras, in the red area on the map, gusted to 64 mph at 5 AM this morning, while reporting waves of over 28 feet. There really aren't any other stations in the area of the high winds and as the storm weakens and eventually goes back out to sea, we may not see higher waves or gusts. We're seeing some some of the most impressive Doppler-Estimated Precip totals so far with this storm; over 6 inches of rain has fallen in parts of the Carolinas (see also individual NEXRAD estimates).

So how will this storm affect Thanksgiving plans for the mid-Atlantic and Northeast? Our Weather Headlines (PREMIUM | PRO) and Breaking Weather News Page have the details, with a special note about winter weather: