【Watch V Online】

UPDATE: Oct. 6,Watch V Online 2017, 8:49 a.m. EDT This story has been updated to include the latest forecast information as of Friday morning.

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The extraordinarily destructive and deadly 2017 Atlantic hurricane season continues, now with Tropical Storm Nate, currently a small storm causing deadly flooding in Nicaragua and Honduras, poised to become a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico.

There are many uncertainties with this storm, primarily concerning its structure and intensification, but computer models are coming into agreement that residents from coastal Louisiana to the Gulf Coast of Florida should be paying close attention to weather forecasts during the next few days.

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Tropical Storm Nate moved inland over northeastern Nicaragua on Thursday morning, dumping life-threatening rainfall of more than 2 feet in some areas. The center of the storm is now back out over the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea, and it's forecast to approach the Yucatan Peninsula by Friday night as a robust tropical storm.

From there, its general track is pretty clear — Nate will accelerate to the north-northeast in response to an expansive area of high pressure across the western Atlantic, which will contribute to summer-like high temperatures in many parts of the East during the weekend. Tropical storm, or, by then, Hurricane Nate, will also feel the affects of a trough of low pressure in the western Gulf of Mexico. Both of these weather systems will form a sort of funnel of air moving from the southwest to the northeast, carrying the storm with it.

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But, as we saw with Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, subtle differences in storm landfall locations matter a whole lot when it comes to storm impacts. The exact track the storm takes will determine the winds and storm surge experienced in cities such as New Orleans and Pensacola, Florida, based on the most recent projections.

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Here's a key message from the National Hurricane Center, for Gulf Coast residents:

Nate is forecast to reach the northern Gulf Coast this weekend as a hurricane, and the threat of direct impacts from wind, storm surge, and heavy rainfall is increasing. However, it is too early to specify the exact timing, location, or magnitude of these impacts. Residents along the Gulf Coast from Louisiana through the Florida Panhandle should monitor the progress of Nate and heed any advice given by local officials.

One trend with Tropical Storm Nate's projections over time has been to shift the landfall location further west, toward coastal Louisiana, while also keeping the storm relatively weak, as a Category 1 hurricane, when it hits land on Sunday.

Evacuations are already underway for low-lying areas in coastal Louisiana, where coastal flooding is a particularly dangerous threat. The National Weather Service forecast office in New Orleans is monitoring the threat for up to 4 to 6 feet of inundation above normally dry land with the storm, as a reasonable worst case scenario.

Luckily, the storm will be moving quickly, which should limit the heavy rainfall in the city. Earlier this year, heavy rains in the city led to damaging flooding flooding when the city's system of pumps broke down. There are lingering questions about the status of the pump system.

The intensity forecast is quite tricky for this particular storm. Tropical Storm Nate will encounter some very mild ocean waters on its journey to the north, which could cause it to intensify more than currently forecast, though the ocean heat content closer to the Gulf Coast is lower. This could mean the storm will intensify on its way to the Gulf Coast but hit an upper limit or weaken as makes its final approach to land.

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There are some hints in computer model guidance that the storm could rapidly intensify as it moves northward, back over open waters, but there are reasons to doubt this, too. One reason is that the storm's circulation is extremely small, and it's embedded in a broader area of shower and thunderstorm activity that is generating other small areas of spin, too.

For now, forecasters will be watching this storm closely, given that if Nate hits the U.S. as a significant hurricane, there will be a relatively limited amount of time to prepare for it. The Gulf Coast has already seen an unprecedented two landfalls of Category 4 storms in the same season, so it will be quite welcome if this one limps northward as a Category 1 or weaker system.

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