It was an unusually stormy day over Florida. We've grown accustomed to balmy weather. We took advantage of the cloud cover to get some much needed yard work done. There were occasional squalls with brief heavy rain but no significant accumulation of rainfall.
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| The storm has delayed the Republican National Convention in Tampa for at least one day (until Tuesday, 8-28-12). It will be interesting to see how the Republicans party while a good portion of the country is being slammed by a Hurricane. They have a poor record when it comes to disaster response (Hurricane Andrew, Hurricane Katrina). |
The weather is being caused by Hurricane Isaac which is a couple hundred miles away in the southeastern Gulf of Mexico. The storm has a very large circulation and is forecast to continue causing stormy weather across the Florida peninsula for days to come.
Of more interest is the improbable path of Hurricane Isaac which has confounded forecasters for days. The track forecast has been a wreck over the last few days, and everyone from the National Hurricane Center to the Weather Channel is having to shift their projected path westward with the computer models, which now take Isaac into Louisiana and Mississippi.
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| The storm looks like a monster in this 2:00 am, 8-27-2012 satellite enhanced image. |
Isaac has hit the sweet spot between the trough over the eastern seaboard and the ridge over the Rocky Mountains, a situation similar to what we had with Tropical Storm Debby earlier this year, where forecasts also had to flip faster than Mitt Romney's policy positions.
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| This is an interesting graphic predicting the amount of rainfall that will be generated by Hurricane Isaac this week. The area from New Orleans to Panama City Florida could see an addition 18.00" (457.2 mm) of rainfall from the storm. I was touring this part of the country last week and it is already soggy. The final story about Isaac might be how much flooding the storm ultimately causes wherever it makes landfall. |
When a storm is in this kind of a position, it is very hard to predict whether the storm will be recurved by the trough or brought westward by the ridge. This is the time when we are very glad to have computer models that can catch on to which path the storm will ultimately take at least 2-3 days in advance of landfall. The track forecast now calls for a 100 mph+ hurricane to make landfall south of New Orleans, though it should be noted that the cone of uncertainty fans out considerably near the gulf coast, and it is still possible that Isaac could deviate significantly to the right or the left.
The National Hurricane Center says "because of the very large spread in the guidance. . . there continues to be greater than usual track forecast uncertainty."
