Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
It’s the end of August and a hurricane is headed towards New Orleans.
You have? Well, there are a few differences between Katrina and Gustav.
Gustav isn’t (yet) a hurricane. Don’t get too hopeful. Weather forecasters expect the storm to reach Category 3 before smacking into the mainland.
Bobby Jindal is governor of Louisiana, and has already declared a state of emergency. Nobody’s going to the Super Dome. People and their pets will be evacuated by train and bus if they cannot get out on their own.
Heck, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin even left Denver. Three years ago, he left New Orleans.
So everybody on the Gulf Coast is asking: where will Gustav come ashore?
Here is Dr. Jeff Masters on the current storm track modeling:
A ridge of high pressure is expected to force Gustav west through Friday. By Saturday, a trough of low pressure moving across the Midwest U.S. should weaken the ridge, and allow Gustav to turn north across western Cuba into the Gulf of Mexico. The final landfall location of Gustav depends on the strength and speed of the trough. In this morning’s runs, we now have some indication that this trough of low pressure may not be strong enough to pull Gustav to the coast by Monday. In fact, the NOGAPS model predicts Gustav will stall offshore the Alabama coast on Monday, before finally edging ashore three days later. The UKMET model is also much slower with its latest run, and slows Gustav down as it approaches the Louisiana/Texas coast on Monday. The latest HWRF model is also slower than the last run, and doesn’t bring Gustav to the coast by the end of its forecast period (Monday). The HWRF foresees a Category 3 or 4 hurricane a few hundred miles south of the Louisiana coast on Monday. The latest ECMWF run is not much slower than the previous run, but does stall Gustav out over central Louisiana once it makes landfall near New Orleans Monday night. The latest GFDL model, though, is not much slower, and predicts landfall in Mississippi early Monday morning as a Category 3 hurricane. In summary, Gustav may slow down considerably just before landfall in the U.S., making its long-term track and landfall location very uncertain at this time.
(Emphasis added.)
We may be about to see if anybody learned anything from Hurricane Katrina.
(The late great Hurricane Fay played pinball with Florida. At least Lake Okeechobee is refilled and the Everglades rehydrated.)
Technorati tags: Gulf Coast, Hurricane Fay, Hurricanes, National Hurricane Center, New Orleans, Tropical Storm Gustav.
Tags: Gulf Coast, hurricane fay, hurricanes, national hurricane center, New Orleans, tropical storm gustav, weather
