Will Hurricane Ian Jolt New England? Not Likely, Meteorologists Say

NORTON, MA — With Hurricane Ian set to make landfall in Florida Wednesday as an intense category 4 storm, you might be wondering if New England will eventually feel some aftershocks.

Ian was set to pass over mainland central Florida beginning Wednesday afternoon, bringing extreme rainfall, coastal wind gusts in the triple-digits and "catastrophic" storm surge.

But after leaving Florida by Friday, the storm will quickly dwindle as it swings northward through South Carolina.

See full coverage of Hurricane Ian.

According to meteorologists at the National Weather Service office in Norton, the storm will have almost completely dissipated by the time any remnants reach the Northeast. That's for the very simple reason that the storm will be traveling over land, and hurricanes use warm ocean water as fuel.

New England may see some rain in the form of a low pressure system, but that's about it.

New England hasn't had a direct hit from a hurricane since Hurricane Bob, which rode relatively warm late-August ocean water to make landfall near Newport, RI, in 1991.

Hurricane Fiona, which tracked far off the eastern seaboard before slamming Nova Scotia, also plays a role in Ian's path. Ian tracked over western Cuba and the Gulf of Mexico, where surface water temperatures have been near 82 degrees recently — jet fuel for hurricanes. Fiona, meanwhile, pulled cool water up the Atlantic seaboard in its wake, making it more difficult for another storm to intensify moving along the same path.

"In theory, the cooler water rising to the surface should make it less likely for a new storm to develop or intensify in the same area in the following days. However, the waters of the North Atlantic were not necessarily cool after Earl and Fiona, just at a lower temperature than before," the NASA Earth Observatory said.

Surface water temperatures off New England right now are near 60, and in the 50s in some cases, making it unlikely — for the 31st year in a row since Bob — that we'll get hit by a strong hurricane.