Will Hurricane Lee Impact Maine? Unlikely, but Not Impossible

What had been another uneventful and quiet hurricane season for the eastern seaboard is about to get a whole lot more interesting. Hurricane Lee has now become an absolute monster in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, establishing category 5 status and somehow still gaining strength.

The key question about Hurricane Lee has focused on where the hurricane may venture and whether or not it will make landfall with likely devastating impact. According to the New York Times, the storm should slow down over the weekend and give forecasters a chance to better predict its eventual path.

With that in mind, the National Hurricane Center distributes their famed "spaghetti models", which compile data about the possible tracks a hurricane can take. The spaghetti strands are often color-coded to show the most-likely and least-likely path.

As of this writing, the most-likely scenario of Hurricane Lee is that it stays out over the ocean as it makes its way up the east coast of the United States. This path would mitigate the impact along the coastline and keep Lee's most deadly components – wind and storm surge – over the ocean.

But the latest run of spaghetti models also shows the possibility that Hurricane Lee could take the same path as Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and make landfall in the northeast. The impact of that scenario could be devastating and deadly. For now, it remains one of the least-likely paths that Hurricane Lee could take.

Hurricane Lee's path and its affect on Maine and all of New England will become more clear by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.