07L: Hurricane Gustav

[Christine Hudnall]

Two Hurricane Hunter planes out now -
Mission 27 traveling north
Mission 28 traveling east

Pretty cool to watch and see what their observations are, on Google Earth.

 

[Gene Moore]

Why the contradictions?

NHC stated in their morning forecast discussion posted on their web page: "100 KT IS A GENEROUS ESTIMATE FOR THE CURRENT INTENSITY." Also, forecast winds and position indicate 100 kts at landfall with no intensification expected.

Yet the public forecast is holding at CAT3 115 MPH. Is this simple CYA, any thoughts.

 

[rdale]

...and actual ground observations from buoys along the coast are only in the 40-70mph range, not even hurricane strength... Bouy just east of the eye dropped from 69 to 53mph this last hour, the one just north of the eye at 28mph. Unknown mesonet "HADS" site on Grand Isle had 105mph, but no idea how that's sited. Winds in New Orleans - 20mph.

 

[Christine Hudnall]

Latest public advisory is showing 95kts - 110mph with higher gusts

 

[rdale]

4 separate tornado warnings all for the same part of just one county:

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

I'm wondering what they are going to call a monster storm when they actually have one. It'd be fun to make a highlight clip of some of the dumbest things said on air. It was funny when the one on air guy on fox asked Shepard Smith, another on air non-met, what the colors on the IR image meant. Like this ain't going to be pretty, lol and it wasn't. And such a confusing concept to begin with. You'd think that would be something simple to pick up by now. It'd also be fun to see how they'd overact the wind when they actually had winds sustained over 100mph.

 

[Christine Hudnall]

They shoulda been at my house during Andrew.

 

[rdale]

This is worse than Andrew per Mayor Nagin

 

[Patrick Marsh]

Someone needs to take away Mobile's ability to issue tornado warnings. 7 tornado warnings out for the same county...

 

[Matthew Fischer]

during the last few images on radar looks like the eye wall is coming back again. Looks to have gone though a cycle. I'm waiting for new obs from the hurricane hunters. The new eye wall is 25 miles SE of Houma, LA.

 

[Christine Hudnall]

This is worse than Andrew per Mayor Nagin

Uhmmmm... *shut up Christine, shut up*

 

[cedwards]

Ali needs to set the camera on manual focus! It keeps trying to focus on the raindrops on the window.

George Kourounis, Dave Lewison, Scott McPartland and others are in a parking garage in Houma. They should be getting a good show soon.

 

[Brian Barnes]

I've never liked Mayor Nagin, I didn't like the way that he and his staff handled Katrina. Instead of calling for mandatory evacuations in 2005, he was afraid the entertainment industry in N.O. would sue the city for running off their tourist. And, I've never liked "Ray Speak", baby. However, despite all the man's mistakes of Katrina, I have to say that I personally think he and his teams have done a stand-up job handling this event (I guess I can say the same for the other local, state and federal agencies thus far).

I saw the press conference where he said this was the "mother of all storms," and while I don't think a met would have quite gone that far... I think it was called for on his part because he has a very tough job of motivating a large city to clear out. And, he is acting on information that he likely received from Bill Read at the time (remember when he said this, Gustav was a Category 4 just south of Cuba, and NHC didn't think Cuba would have much effect on it at the time - so they were all thinking "probable category 5").

Of course there is that element of "crying wolf" and if or not people will listen up and act on his information the next time a storm is bearing down on the Gulf Coast - but as for this storm, I have to give him applause..and I never thought I would say that.

I just hope that a storm chaser(s) doesn't get pulled over by the police and accused of stealing (again) - because this time it sounds like it's state prison and general population instead of the city jail. Yikes!

 

[MatthewCarman]

Wow look at all of the possible tropical development behind Gustav and Hannah:

 

[Chris Hayes]

Water is said to be topping one of the levees in the lower 9th ward of NOLA.