New Jersey finally got a taste of tropical storm Debby today as forecasters extended a nearly Statewide tornado watch through this evening a wind advisory also remains in effect with the National Weather Service saying wind gusts of up to 50 miles per hour could be recorded along the shoreline forecasters have been keeping a close eye on North Jersey areas like Bergen Essex Morris Warren and Sussex counties but also in the central region of the state as the storm tracks further west periods of heavy rain dowed the area throughout the day which is why a flood watch remains in effect for counties ranging from Camden and Gloucester up to Somerset and Sussex until early Saturday morning flooding could become a problem since the state was pummeled with rain the last few days for all the latest I'm joined by state climatologist Dave Robinson Dave good to talk to you on a day like this um we have been sort of ramping up for Debby it has felt like all week a lot of us uh were confused when we had the heavy rainfall earlier in the week that was not in fact Debbie um today was the heart of it did we dodge a bullet though here we did dodge a bullet for the most part in New Jersey the storm tracked further to the West once it got up here into the middle latitudes and the heaviest rain has fallen in Pennsylvania up into New York and even into Eastern Canada um we're very fortunate as you mentioned we had the heavy rain earlier in the week um was it a precursor of worse things to come no but it actually set up the pattern that helped direct Debby up from the southeast to the Northeast but was just a little further west than originally expected so Noah is forecasting an active hurricane season we're getting closer I guess to the peak of it it runs from June to November but what are the factors that contribute to it being an active season yeah there's one potential that they're starting to look at for next week that would go into the Caribbean and suchu so we're going to really be very attentive for the next couple of months and it has to do with the fact that we're have very warm sea surface temperatures in where these storms originate and that's where they get their fuel we have active weather pattern coming off the African continent and that helps to get the atmosphere spinning we also have what we call a a linia events starting to come into play and that helps to quiet the atmosphere in in the tropical areas that allows these storms to percolate so there's a lot of factors contributing to this Outlook of a very active season one that's already been fairly active so I mean put that in perspective for for us what does an active season look like how many storms potentially they're talking anywhere the upper teens to the low 20s in terms of number of storms that could be five to 10 storms more main storms than normal a few extra stronger hurricanes than normal uh a very active pattern suggested uh but we have a long ways to go we've gotten off to a pretty strong start but as you mentioned this becomes the active period now it really Peaks about the first second week of September and then as we saw with Sandy back uh in 2012 it can go to late October what are you watching for Dave what are you concerned about when we had this really we were inundated we were drenched with rain earlier this week we know that more is coming and Noah is saying it will be an active season so you know get ready what do you watch for from your perch there yeah we were fortunate early this week that we had been rather dry in mid and Late July so the rivers were able to handle it um the soils were dry and they soaked up the rain what I be concerned about is these precursory storms something like early this week followed by a tropical storm or just a major tropical storm in and by itself uh only so much rainfall these Rivers can handle so when we start talking four 6 8 Ines of rainfall and over a large area that's when we start worrying about River flooding in the short term we worry about flash flooding that we saw earlier this week on a localized scale but it's the repetitive nature of these wet periods people may remember Irene back in 2011 of August it was preceded by a very wet August and that was just a cherry on top of that cake yeah I guess we fortunate that we had the the really hot uh weather uh without the rain hey let me ask you Dave very quickly Noah's also made some predictions about high tide flooding we'll have fewer high tide days this year than last it's got to be a good thing yeah sure it's a good thing and we had quite a spike last year in part because we had a number of coastal storms during the winter it was what we call an El Nino winter where we have an active Coastal storm track and that pushes the water up onto Shore this year we're going into alanin the storm track tends to be Inland and it reduces the high water along the coast so that's why last year was high this year is expected to be lower there are some other factors as well but that's the prime one where the storms track state climatologist Dave Robinson for us thanks say always my pleasure