First Alert Forecast: Tracking lake effect rain, and Hurricane Ian

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Starting with Hurricane Ian – it strengthened into a major hurricane on Tuesday as it briefly impacted Cuba, then moved north, taking aim at the Sunshine State. Ian is still forecast to make landfall as a category 3 hurricane somewhere between Tampa and Fort Myers on Wednesday night/Thursday morning. The main impacts will be storm surge on the eastern side of the storm, along with damaging wind and flooding rain for a large portion of west central Florida. We’ll continue to track the latest changes on Ian on air on News10NBC. 

Meanwhile, we’re feeling the full impact of fall weather, with dark skies, low clouds and lake effect rain. Some water spouts have even been reported off of the shoreline over Lake Ontario. A wind shift tonight will help to push a band of lake effect showers and some downpours south, across our northern counties, including the Rochester metro. This will tend to break apart overnight, leaving us with a cloudy and cool day Wednesday, along with some more scattered lake rain showers, especially through the morning. This rain won’t be as organized as the last few days, and thus not as heavy. Thursday may start off with a lingering shower or two, but should see nice clearing by the afternoon, and we’ll keep the dry weather going through Friday and right into the weekend. At this, point, the only impact we’ll feel from Ian this weekend will be high clouds thickening up and helping to dull our sunshine. We may get a few showers by Tuesday of next week, thanks to some of that tropical moisture combining with a cold front.