Posts Tagged ‘Weather’
Live video of Ike hitting Galveston
It’s already flooding and storm hasn’t even hit yet. Check it out here, for as long as the feed stays up.
If the feed isn’t on Galveston, move your cursor to the top of the video. They change that active channel sometimes and you can switch to the seawall cam.
Also, watch out for bears (or possibly just furries in general).
The sea is angry
Where is Hurricane Ike going?
Update: A Texas landfall as a major hurricane now looks likely.
Noticing a theme on the blog lately? The storms are just lined up this summer. As of September 4, Ike is a very strong category 4 hurricane with winds of 145mph. Here is the current tracking map, with intensity, from Weather Underground:
This is not good
There is still a lot of margin of error on the long term track of this storm. The southern most track potentially gives us a Gulf of Mexico storm, and the northern most track offers the possibility of Ike recurving out to sea. Pretty much any path looks grim for the Bahamas though, and if you are on Florida’s east coast then you need to be paying close attention. Here are the latest model runs:
One of these might be accurate
As always, the best place to go for information on any storm is the National Hurricane Center.
Where is Hanna going?
As of September 2nd, Hanna looks to grazing the east coast of Florida by the end of the week, and then moving northward towards Georgia or the Carolinas. The National Hurricane Center has more info.
Official NHC track
One of the best ways to measure Hanna’s potential impact is by looking at the probabilities of tropical storm force winds hitting within the next five days:
Windy
Gustav now a major hurricane
As of Saturday afternoon, Gustav is packing 145 mph winds and is expected to instensify further to a category 5 storm. It shouldn’t be able to maintain cat 5 status for that long of a period, but this will definitely still be a major hurricane when it makes landfall. Here’s a good map with the intensity forecast:
Yikes
The latest satellite picture would be cool looking if, you know, this wasn’t a death machine:
The only thing scarier than this? Zombie Robot Gustave Eiffel, of course.
He haunts my dreams
Where is Gustav going?
Update (August 30): This post is getting a lot of hits via Google, so I wanted to drop in a more updated map. Gustav has grown into a large storm, and will impact areas beyond what is indicated by the National Hurricane Center track line. Speaking of which, go to the NHC for the latest updates. The graphic below is the probabilities of a location undergoing tropical storm force winds or greater in the next 5 days. Gustav’s impacts are clear, and on the right side you can see the emergence of Hanna. This is one of the best graphics to use to determine the impact that the storm will have on you (aside from storm surge).
Click to embiggen
In short, maybe New Orleans or maybe south Texas. The National Hurricane Center lays it out like this:
Click to embiggen
There is a high pressure system that will possibly interact with Gustav. Some models predict little interaction and steer it towards New Orleans. Still others predict a strong interaction and push Gustav into the western Gulf. Here are the latest model runs:
Click to embiggen
There is a lot of uncertainty with this storm. What everyone does agree on is that it should intensify into a major hurricane once it hits the open waters of the Gulf.
Oh, and as for Tropical Storm Hanna, the models are currently just a jumbled mess:
Click to embiggen
Hurricane Gustav in the Carribean
This storm sure spun up in a hurry, going from a Tropical Depression yesterday morning to a 90 mph hurricane today. The forecast track is particularly worrisome, as it has Gustav moving south of Cuba and entering into the Gulf of Mexico this weekend. This would likely result in Gustav being a major hurricane when it hits the Gulf.
The 5 day forecast, as of August 26:
This isn't good
The computer model plots are in fairly strong agreement this morning:
Pretty lines
Which way is Fay going?
Update: As of Monday afternoon, the NHC has Fay making landfall in southwest Florida.
As of Sunday evening, Tropical Storm (and soon to be hurricane) Fay is just south of Cuba. The National Hurricane Center forecast currently has Fay making landfall as a hurricane in the Big Bend region of Florida.
Click to embiggen
The path it follows could make a huge difference. If it hugs the right edge of the cone, then Fay gets very little time over water to recover from its time over Cuba and would be more of a rain event for south Florida. If it tracks along the western edge of the cone, then it would spend a lot of time over the very warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. That could make for a nasty storm. Also bear in mind that the strongest winds are usually found in the northeastern quadrant of a hurricane, so traveling parallel to the Florida coast could deliver quite a beating.
The NHC generates their forecast path based on the output of several computer models. Here are the latest model runs for Fay:
Click to embiggen
The best thing to do, as always, is to keep watching and make sure you are prepared.
Radar image of Hurricane Dolly approaching the coast
Even the smaller storms are scary looking.
Weather Fail
March 2008 is the second warmest March on record
From NOAA:
The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the second warmest on record in March, behind 2002, and the eleventh warmest on record for January-March year-to-date period. Temperatures were warmer than average across Europe and Asia, prompting the March 2008 global and Northern Hemisphere land surface temperatures to be the warmest since records began in 1880. La Niña, the cold phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, persisted in the equatorial Pacific, damping ocean surface temperatures. The global average ocean sea surface temperature (SST) in March was the 13th warmest on record.
via Climate Progress
