It took a little longer than expected, but the area of disturbed weather off the North Carolina Coast finally became tropical in nature this afternoon (at first, the NHS listed it as a subtropical storm....don't ask me what made it "tropical" by 5pm but "sub-tropical" at 2pm).

At this point, Gabriel is a weak tropical storm with winds sustained at 40mph (although I do think that may be underdone a bit). While the track of Gabby (below) indicates that nobody west of the Eastern Shore will be impacted by the storm, in recent hours, the tropical storm has wobbled a bit west which may in turn take the track a bit further west.


This westward trend must be monitored, and I do still think that there is an outside chance that Gabby reached hurricane status before making landfall in Eastern Carolina. Unless something drastic happens however, it doesn't look like Gabby will be one for the memories.