8/13/04 NOW: Charley [Florida]

For some reason, I'm having a terrible time with pulling up any kind of weather on the internet...

I think in this situation a lot of weather sites are overloaded with all these people trying to keep up with the storm. Some good sites are:

http://vortex.plymouth.edu/tropical.html (basically a mirror of all of NHC's data)
http://weather.cod.edu/analysis/ (great weather site in general, the radar section is what i've been using to track Charley)

Those two have generally been pretty good for me as that's all I'm interested in.

As for forcasting the path of the storm, I'm in no way experienced either but what I've noticed is that once a storm and a front come together, the storm tends to want to "stick" to the front and move up with it. Usually this is because (I think) fronts generally have very strong mid/upper level winds with them which tends to grab the hurricane and steer it along with wherever the front lies. This is my rudimentary understanding - I'm sure someone else could set us straight.
 
Latest hurricane hunter info:

min. central pressure down to 945mb
flight level winds of 138kt reported 1nm east of center
eye diameter down to 5nm
 
Charley looks to be veering to the east a little bit again and it looks like the center will be going right up through Charlotte Harbor. Pretty much a worst-case scenario for the Punta Gorda/Charlotte Harbor area. The storm surge and flooding alone will be devastating.
 
Storm Surge at Charlotte Harbor

They have got some amazing video on those webcasts...simply amazing!
Thanks for sharing the links.
sg
 
A good detailed map as it makes landfall (moving on a 030 deg track)... not very legible but it does have all of the geographic features. The eye is coming right up the bay.

I'm not up on whether the storm has a closed or open eye, but it would be awesome to FINALLY get some good pics from the eye from somebody. These darn things are always too weak or come onshore at night.

[Broken External Image]:http://www.stormtrack.org/hurrchar.gif
 
A good detailed map as it makes landfall (moving on a 030 deg track)... not very legible but it does have all of the geographic features. The eye is coming right up the bay.

Excellent overlay. How'd you do that? Where'd you get the base map?
 
major structure damage is being reported in Punta Gorda FL.. Sadly my grandparents live there and they can never be convinced to evacuate during a Hurricane.

I'm rather worried right now :(
 
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