Chris, you managed to do all that without getting attacked by a gator or rattlesnakes? Good job! I think I would have died of sunstroke before I got done.
Ken, it looks like Hanna is going to be a good girl, with just rain and a little wind. She never had a lot of punch to begin with and she's getting torn up pretty good as she moves further north.
Paul, that scummer sounds like something even worse for your health than what we've dreamed up down here.
I'll take two though.
Ray, you're right, you're getting the last gasps of Gustav there. Luckily, Gustav and Hanna stay far enough apart that they didn't merge, would could have caused some big problems. It's amazing how much moisture these tropical systems can carry so far north.
Corey, I hate blizzards, snow, or any form of frozen precipitation. The first snow was always pretty and then it was just five months of hard shoveling after that. I really hated it when my hand got frozen to the door handle of my car. Hurricanes are no fun either but at least I don't have to shovel rain.
Steve, that rain really should be moving over the continent now so I hope you dry out. That surname profiler does not work right. My late wife's maiden name was Srpan. She was from Slovenia and, even there, it's a very rare name. Every single Srpan I've tracked down is related to her, yet the profiler shows people with that name in India! I can assure there are no Srpan's in India.
Another hot and dry day here in the Southland as we all wait to see what Ike will do. The only thing I know for sure is that the Turks and Caicos Islands are going to get him full force. It's ramped back up to a cat 4 with 130 mph sustained winds and 160 mph gusts. The central pressure fell from 28.38 inches to 28.01 inches in three hours, the sign of a rapidly intensifying storm. It's about three hours away from the east Bahamas and eight hours away form Grand Turk Island, packing a 9 to 12 foot storm surge. I can't see any way that the Turks and Caicos and the southern Bahamas will escape devastating damage from this hit.
Things get much more murky after the next 12 hours. It looks like the Bermuda high will continue to push Ike further south in the short term, which means poor Haiti is going to get yet more killer flooding. The models are split on how close he will get to Cuba and how much time he will spend over land. The more time he spends over Cuba, the better for the Keys. If he just skirts Cuba, he will be at least a strong cat 2 or cat 3 when he should make a northward turn in response to the low pressure trough left behind by Hanna. A slight change in the track north or south has important implications for the Keys.
Now things really start to get hazy. The models are split between wanting to take Ike right over the Keys and then up the west coast of Florida, just offshore, and moving him further west before he makes his northward turn, with minimal effects on the Keys. There's even one model that wants to take it up the west coast of Florida and have it make a hard right into Tampa Bay.
I think that's very unlikely but not impossible.
Once Ike is in the Gulf, we are right back to where we were with Gustav. He could make landfall anywhere from Houston to the Big Bend of Florida. My main concern is that he is a much more powerful and better organized storm than Gustav. He has already gone through two rapid intensification cycles and is likely to do the same again at some point. The forecaster's nightmare is that he approaches landfall as cat 2 and then rapidly intensifies to a cat 4 or cat 5 with only 10 or 12 hours warning. I hope this doesn't happen but the emergency management agencies should assume it will.
We have almost zero ability to predict track or intensity five days out so all I can do is urge everyone in Florida and the Gulf Coast to stock up on supplies in anticipation that a major hurricane is headed your way and evacuate early if that looks like the safest option. Closely monitor the forecasts and be prepared to take action immediately. This is a not a time to panic but it's also not a time to assume that Ike will just be another Gustav.
).