Maybe the forecast track will shift overnight more than I thought: the Houston Chronicle’s Eric Berger now sees a Texas trend in the computer models.
However, unless we see the models start to “cluster” — and there’s no sign of that yet — I suspect there won’t be enough certainty in the forecast, even if the official track does shift westward, to forestall the necessity of full-scale New Orleans evacuations tomorrow.
Speaking of which, I haven’t had time to closely follow the local news in New Orleans, but the Times-Picayune’s New Orleans Hurricane Center is doing an excellent job of tracking everything. It should be your first stop if you want to know what’s happening in the Big Easy.
Anyway… Gustav is now up to 80 mph, as of 8pm EDT. I’ll probably post another update shortly after the 11pm EDT advisory. I’ll also be adding some new resources to my blogroll, so stay tuned for that. And in fact, if you have suggestions for blogroll links — blogs, news sites, or other resources with regularly updated, quality information about Gustav — please leave ‘em in comments.
I’m in Houston; I am definitely watching this.
Our mayor Bill White has said that Houston will not be welcoming New Orleans evacuees this time. The city’s official plan is to take them to Greyhound and bus them off to other cities. (linky) Googling around tells me that it’s north Texas which expects to receive them…
The computer models were definitely trending toward a Texas hit, and was actually thinking it would be almost as wise to elevate the risk level in Houston as it is in New Orleans. However, at this moment (Friday 2130pm) they seem to have congealed a bit back toward LA (though not a direct hit on New Orleans).
Still, it has to go over Cuba and who knows what kilter that might throw into it.
I put up the tracks of Katrina and Gustav side by side here. http://penguinsix.com/2008/08/29/hurricane-katrina-v-gustav-storm-tracks/ You can see how Katrina was much more of a dead on NoLA than Gustav appears to be at this time.
St. Bernard Parish just called a mandatory evacuation for 4 PM Saturday. The parish is about 40% to 50% repopulated from pre-Katrina, about 30,000 plus.
Hey, what’s up with the NHC’s hurricane probability table. I mean, it’s currently a hurricane, and there is a lot of talk of it possibly becoming major. So, why does the chart indicate that there is no more than a 60% chance of hurricane force winds anywhere except a really tiny dot where the hurricane currently is? It’s been like this all day, I figured for sure once they declared it a hurricane they would “deepen the colors” so to speak.
Here is the graphic I refer to:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at2+shtml/205016.shtml?hwind120#contents