Jimmy

About 5 hours from now is the 3-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall. Not sure why I bring that up, it just seems right in a post about a possibly major hurricane heading into the Gulf of Mexico in late August. (But remember: FINAL LANDFALL LOCATION COULD STILL BE ANYWHERE ON THE NORTHERN GULF COAST. Just, you know, saying.)

At 11pm the NHC reported that Tropical Storm Gustav was located along the south coast of Jamaica and had winds of 70mph.

The official track forecast mirrors the consensus of the computer forecasting models, which are in pretty good agreement through about 96 hours, at which point some models take the storm up through Mississippi, most models take the storm inland in central or western Louisiana while a few other models take the storm into the Texas coast. The bottom line on final landfall is best summed up by the NHC themselves in the 11pm forecast discussion:

SINCE TRACK FORECASTS ARE ALWAYS SUBJECT TO LARGE ERRORS AT 3-5 DAYS…IT IS SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE AT THIS TIME TO DETERMINE EXACTLY WHERE AND WHEN GUSTAV WILL MAKE FINAL LANDFALL.

At this point a landfall early next week somewhere between eastern Texas and the Alabama/Florida border seems most likely to me.

Before that, Gustav should move through the Cayman Islands (which now have a hurricane warning in effect) late tomorrow (Friday), pass over the western tip of Cuba late Saturday or Saturday night and travel through the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday. The NHC is forecasting some pretty intense strengthening: bringing the storm back to hurricane strength by the time it reaches the Cayman Islands and to Major Hurricane strength (category 3) by the time it reaches Cuba. At that point the storm will have entered a wild and dangerous place that’s even harder to forecast than “normal” hurricane intensities, as intensity will be governed by eyewall replacement cycles as well as the normal favors of ocean water temperature and atmospheric winds. The official NHC forecast peaks the storm at high-end category 3 before bringing it slightly lower before landfall, but it’s really impossible to know how intense the winds will be 5 days from now. I think it’s likely that it will be a major hurricane at landfall, but it’s not out of the question that some atmospheric wind shear will come out of nowhere and weaken Gustav to a category 2 or even 1 storm by landfall. Bottom line? Major Hurricanes are wild and insane beasts that defy conventional forecasting logic (probably mostly because there are so few of them each year that we don’t have a large enough data set to even come up with “conventional logic” to apply to them!) and can act in seemingly random ways. Forecasting such storms even 12 hours out is a challenge, let alone 4-5 days out.

Please forgive me if I sound kinda excited about this. I know that this is a seriously dangerous storm that has already killed 51 people in Haiti and is probably adding to that total in Jamaica right now. I am quite frankly insanely fascinated by major hurricanes and sometimes that comes through as excitement about the storm. I don’t mean any disrespect to the people already affected by this storm nor to the people in the possible path. In the future I hope to research these storms to help save lives from future storms, so please know that my excitement isn’t misplaced.

Check the Gustav tag for all the posts on this storm.

Stay safe y’all.

Cheers.

-jimmy

P.S. I’ll probably have a post on the currently “ocean-locked” Tropical Storm Hanna sometime tomorrow.

Posted in: Tropical Weather by jimmy / Tags: Gustav, Tropical Weather