Shea Allen » Tropical

Tropical Update: Gustav, Hanna, Ike & Josephine

Shea — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:39:51 +0000

Busy day today, so let’s get moving. First things first: Gustav has weakened to Tropical Depression status today. Even though the punch wasn’t as bad as they predicted, making landfall in Cocodrie, LA as a category 2 hurricane, the rainfall has been quite substantial. The Hydrometeorological Prediction Center says that Saraland, AL tops the charts for most rainfall from Gustav with 7.62 inches at 1PM today. The Little River near Rochelle, LA takes second place with only 7.07 inches and Big Creek at Pollock, LA comes in third place with 6.91 inches. Storm total rainfalls are exptected to be five to ten inches with isolated maximums reaching fifteen inches or more covering portions of Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi. It is all downhill from here for this storm as it sits on land rotating just NW of Baton Rouge, LA. No more predictions as of now since its barely hanging on.

Time to move on to more important storms! Good Day to you Tropical Storm Hanna! Okay, this storm, as Fay did, has been acting unusual lately. All the models for this storm ARE saying that it will eventually head North along the Florida Atlantic coastline making landfall either somewhere along the way, Georgia or South Caroline. It is in no immediate threat to Destin, FL or any other city on the Gulf of Mexico coast. Below is an image with all its models in case you don’t believe me =)

Hanna is expected to become a hurricane Wednesday evening while it grazes over top of the Bahamas which are, of course, in a Hurricane Warning right now. Besides the Tropical Storm Warning of North Haiti, there are no other warnings/watches at this time. I do not believe Hanna will do any more damage than Gustav when its time to make landfall. Also, I won’t be watching Hanna as much as I do the storms which make it into the Gulf of Mexico as they do not pertain to me locally. Moving on!

Tropical Storm Ike formed yesterday evening (Monday, September 1st) and almost seemed to skip Tropical Depression status. As far as I understand, they are not able to determine wind speeds, and thus storm potential, without sending the Hurricane Hunters into the eye of the storm. In other words, Ike must’ve been a tropical depression at one point, but since it wasn’t checked out sooner (as irrelevant as it is being so far out while we’re being attacked by Gustav and Hanna), then it is at first advisory, a Tropical Storm. EVERY SINGLE COMPUTER MODEL shows Ike taking a due west path, as I said yesterday, and coming across Caribbean, then Cuba, and into the Gulf of Mexico. To far into the future to say where it’ll be heading from there if it makes it that far without deciding to take an alternate route. There are chances it will head towards the Yucatan Peninsula and into Mexico, or it could veer North and make landfall in the United States. Here is the official NHC projected path:

I’ll be watching this one carefully so stay tuned for updates on Ike.

Last but certainly not least, Tropical Storm Josephine decided to organize today out of Tropical Depression ten off the coast of Africa. It is even FURTHER away than Ike and already pulling itself together. Scary scary. Most of the computer models have it heading a little bit above Ike as it takes a WNW path towards the coastline but it will easily be almost two weeks before its an immediate threat to anybody. Satellite anyone?

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Tropical Storm Gustav – 2:00PM

Shea — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:42:49 +0000

So this storm has already made a move that none of the computer models had predicted. This morning it took a sharp turn downward and went almost due south for a few hours before returning to its original path of NW. Now almost all 6 computer models show the system heading for New Orleans. I believe the state issued a “state of emergency” on Monday for its coastal cities, but this is still unconfirmed. I still have a little hunch that the storm will not be directly hitting Louisiana. I believe it may continue to travel a little more West possibly scratching the surface of the Yucatan Peninsula before heading North again towards Texas OR the low pressure system hanging around lower Mexico (shown below) will resurface into the Gulf and push Gustav East towards the Alabama/Florida line.

Here are the models. I’ll update when something changes.

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Tropical Storm Hanna 2:00PM

Shea — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:24:40 +0000

Hello Hanna! We’re getting close to the end of August as the eighth named storm of the season gathers strength. Even though it is far from anywhere right now, it is still a storm to watch. Since almost EVERY meterologist got Fay wrong a few weeks ago, we have to start watching these a little closer. The National Hurricane Center gives Hanna a 42% chance of becoming a Hurricane within the next 48 hours which actually increases to a 62% chance in 72 hours. Although the storm is still way out in the middle of nowhere heading NW, most computer models according to wunderground (see below), predict that it’ll be taking a sharp turn sometime Sunday. This will be caused by a high pressure system moving off the east coast.

I will update when things change. Until then, keep an eye on Gustav!