GoBoB Chasing

Tropical storm Gustav has continued its slow advance across the northwestern Caribbean Thursday. Explosive intensification over the next 24 is imminent and once hurricane status is regained, it will not be surrendered until well into the Republican Convention.

There is once again fair divergence in the computer models so there really is a great deal of uncertainty about the final track. Yesterday the hurricane hunter’s dropped 60 specialized pressure and temperature sensors into the water. This data is ingested into the HWRF and GFDL models. This additional sampling should in theory help them initialize much better and make them the ones to pay a little extra attention to.

Hanna is potentially another nightmare.

Besides being a sprinting powerhouse in the 2008 Summer Olympics, Haiti is apparently the world heavy-weight champion hurricane destruction machine by means of Technical Knock Out! (try to imagine this introduction voiced by Michael Buffer.)

Haiti bludgeoned Gustav to the point that reconnaissance aircraft measured only 39 knot maximum flight level winds this evening. They plan to deploy 20 special buoy sensors tomorrow to get a better idea of water temperatures.

This looks puny and a bunch of bureaucrats may be prematurely wiping their collective brow. Unfortunately this will get dicey during the Labor Day weekend when Federal, State, and Local government are in a pseudo-coma. NOAA’s agencies will forecast and “Call to Action” as they always do, but will anyone heed the warnings? Remember when Katrina “hit” Florida and then looked puny everyone breathed a sigh-of-relief and went home for the Labor Day weekend. Gustav looks puny, but I still see him as a deadly mass murderer.

Tropical Cyclone Heat Potential (TCHP) values in excess of 80 kJ/cm^2 caused the 2005 storms to undergo rapid intensification.

Haiti’s mountains robbed Gustav of most of its strength knocking it down to a Tropical Storm for a short respite. The official track now barely scrapes the western tip of Cuba. Gustav next tracks over unusually warm sea surface temperatures in a low shear environment. I see no impediments to Gustav becoming a major cat 4 or 5 storm in the Gulf of Mexico.

There is beginning to be some model consensus and they portend some fairly ominous targets not the least of which is New Orleans, LA nearly exactly 3 years to the day Katrina hit. The NHC guidance suggests just under cat 4 in 72 hours.

There is no way that I cannot fathom this storm not negatively impacting petroleum interests in the Gulf.

The official Hurricane Prediction Center trajectory plot curves ever closer to the GoBoB goober projection by the hour.

Note the formation of an eyewall in this visible satellite imager over the past four hours from the previous post. The National Hurricane Center is upgrading rapidly intensifying Gustav to a Tropical Storm.

WTNT62 KNHC 251803
TCUAT2
TROPICAL STORM GUSTAV TROPICAL CYCLONE UPDATE
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL072008
200 PM EDT MON AUG 25 2008
REPORTS FROM AN AIR FORCE HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT INDICATE THAT
TROPICAL DEPRESSION SEVEN HAS STRENGTHENED TO BECOME TROPICAL STORM
GUSTAV WITH MAXIMUM WINDS NEAR 60 MPH...95 KM/HR. A SPECIAL
ADVISORY WILL BE ISSUED WITHIN THE NEXT 30 MINUTES TO UPDATE THE
INTENSITY FORECAST AND WATCHES AND WARNINGS FOR HISPANIOLA.

Tropical Depression 7, formally known as Invest 94L, and likely Tropical Storm Gustav before days end has developed into a much more organized storm as evidenced by the visible satellite images. It is interesting to note the complete lack of consensus among the various computer model and the estimated track the Hurricane Prediction Center has settled on. In the spaghetti trajectory plot, you may notice the GFS in green handled Fay’s crazy behavior fairly well, conversely the GFS did not even develop this into an organized storm. These models are the same ones that predict global warming so…

While Fay never achieved hurricane status, she was unprecedented in four separate and distinct landfalls across Florida and dumping copious amounts of rain.

Hurricane watchers attention now turns to Invest 94L which could eventually be named Gustav if it intensifies. The current model tracks keep it south of Cuba in the very warmest of sea surface temperatures. There are obviously a lot of variables and some possible shear problems but given the potential over warm water and minimal interaction with land this could mess up Labor Day weekend for a lot of people. This could be a big one.

I’m not talking about women’s sand volleyball or gymnastics (though those were fine too). I saw some jack ass saying Michael Phelps could melt down his medals and live comfortably for the rest of his life. Well the jack ass is wrong because the “gold” and “silver” are made of silver with only six grams or 0.19 ounce, of gold electroplated. Melt them all and you have less than $2000 .

Interestingly China got cheap with the medals. They used jade instead of silver. It is unusual in that you always see the back (obverse) side of the medal photographed this year (whose form is strictly controlled by the IOC and does not change much between Olympics). Normally the front is ALWAYS displayed to recognize the athlete and host country’s participation.

Here are images of the front:

and back:

At quarter past midnight CDT, Fay has survived Cuba and appears to begin intensifying. Current models move the track westward, but Tampa Bay still is my prediction.