Friday, August 17, 2007

8/17 - 9:25pm - Flippin' and Floppin' with Dean

Alright. This morning it was Mexico. This afternoon it was Houston. This evening its Mexico again. As you can tell, landfall estimates for hurricanes are very sticky this far out. The media seems to hate that too, as it seems that every news agency wants a definite landfall answer right this second. I really don't blame them, we need to get the alert out as fast as possible so we don't end up with another hurricane disaster. A top official in Houston has even put the city on notice with this storm. I'm glad nobody is messing around with this one.

The short answer for the landfall placement of Hurricane Dean is "I DON'T KNOW!!!" I was starting to go with the south Texas solution until this model Mickey Mouse occurred this evening. Now I don't know what to say. The GFDL seems to always be the outcast model on this particular system. When the other models trend one way, the GFDL looks the other way. It's really quite a neat model because it shows a 3D view of the forecasted path. Here's the current one:

GFDL

It seems that the National Hurricane Center is going with the model trends. Due to the southward shift in models this evening, the NHC adjusted their forecast accordingly. So they really have as much of an idea about landfall as I do. So, if you know anyone in the South Texas Coast area you might want to let them know about this storm if they haven't already heard about it. Regardless of where it hits, I can make a good guess that it'll be a category 5 based on the water temperature.

Back here in town the weather has calmed down after that "shocker" of a storm. I must say that I was quite surprised by the development of that MCS. I saw the SPC's SLIGHT RISK yesterday but I never thought a line of storms like that would form. Did a number on our temperatures though! Low to mid 90's will dominate this week, which is a relief from our 105 (ouch) yesterday...

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