Tropical Storm Franklin is strengthening into a hurricane off the East Coast

Tropical Storm Franklin It began gaining strength Thursday and is likely to grow into a powerful Category 2 hurricane with winds of 110 mph by early next week as it moves north off the East Coast into the open Atlantic Ocean.

The good news: Franklin is expected to remain about 400 miles off the New Jersey coast, so its impacts on the Garden State and other parts of the eastern US will likely be limited to rough waves and strong currents, according to meteorologists from Accweather and the National Weather Service.

• also: Smoky start, frequent thunderstorms. The strange, gray, lost New Jersey summer.

“The only thing we’re really going to see from Franklin is an increase in rip currents and some large seas and ocean swells,” Joe DeSilva, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Regional Forecast Office in Mount Holly, said Thursday morning. “We don’t really expect anything in terms of wind” or rain.

If rain falls in New Jersey on Tuesday or Wednesday, DeSilva said it will come from a cold front that is expected to make its way from the west and across New Jersey — not from any tropical influences. He said a cold front would help keep Franklin several hundred miles off the coast of the Jersey Shore.

Forecasters from AccuWeather Franklin says it is likely to cause “the formation of offshore seas, turbulent waves, and a slight increase in the number and strength of crushing currents, especially from the Carolinas to Massachusetts, during this weekend and into the early part of next week.”

“However, since Cape Cod, Massachusetts, extends east into the Atlantic Ocean, wave action and possibly wind from Franklin could be a bigger problem than from New Jersey or South Carolina, should more westward running occur,” he said. AccuWeather.

until late Thursday morning, Franklin was a tropical storm It orbits about 90 miles east-northeast of Grand Turk Island, between the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas. Its maximum winds were blowing at 60 mph National Hurricane Center He said.

Once sustained winds reach 74 mph, Franklin will become a Category 1 hurricane, which is expected to happen by Saturday. If it reaches maximum winds of 96 to 110 mph, it will be a Category 2 hurricane with “extremely dangerous winds” that can cause widespread damage.

The only land mass that could be in the target area for some of Franklin’s direct impacts would be Bermuda, meteorologists from AccuWeather said. But for now, they expect the hurricane’s center to remain “west of the islands.”

And in New Jersey, meteorologists say a warm front is expected to bring rain and thunderstorms Thursday afternoon, with activity picking up late Thursday night into early Friday morning.

the National Weather Service regional office in New York He said there is a marginal risk of heavy rain in New York City and also in the northeastern region of New Jersey on Friday.

“There remains the potential for isolated flash flooding, particularly in urban areas that can see fast-flowing torrential rain,” the MetService said in its hazardous weather forecast.

current weather radar

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Len Melisurgo can be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com.