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?
