TD #16 becomes Tropical Storm Ophelia

Looks like we may run through the entire alphabet before this season is over.

Currently, the prediction does not have it developing beyond tropical storm stage and on the current track it would make landfall somewhere along the FL-GA border.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

It may even become a category 3 during the next 72 hours

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/storm_graphics/AT16/refresh/AL1605I_sm2+gif/031000P_sm.gif

Computer models...

New Orleans has been through enough, dammit! Send it out to sea!

Damn, what a hurricane season.

And you know what the hurtful irony is, something that's barely made a blip on the media radar? At the very same time thousands were drowning in NOLA, John Bolton was bullying his way through the UN, demanding some 750 amendments to a "30-page plan on UN reform that was to be signed by world leaders when they meet in New York in September."

Among the changes demanded by Bolton: "The United States' 39-page revised draft eliminates nearly all references to the Millennium Development Goals adopted by all nations, including the United States, at a similar UN summit in 2000. Those goals pledge, among other things, to halve world poverty by 2015, and other nations are likely to resist that change in the document most strongly.

"The US draft significantly reduces a section on poverty in favor of bolstered sections on strengthening free-market values and spreading democracy. It deletes mention of institutions and treaties the United States opposes, such as the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto treaty on global warming. The draft also deletes a proposal that nuclear powers dismantle their arsenals, but strengthens passages on fighting terrorism."

It's enough to make you sick. And even as we scream and mourn about the atrocity the Bush administration has committed against its own citizens in the Gulf Coast, Bolton is fighting the war on poverty and global warming at the U.N. I don't want DUers to let this fly under the radar.

(Reference: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0829/dailyUpdate.html )

Bolton's outrages are flying beneath the radar, people. This man was, as poor people were drowning in NOLA and we're facing increasingly violent weather, fighting to have language removed from U.N. programs to fight global warming and poverty!

And GFDL has consistently taken TD16/Ophelia into the Gulf and directly toward New Orleans.



Visit the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at NOAA

--p!

and show me where it says that?

The GFDL has been showing a move west into the gulf for the last few runs tis true, but Ophelia hasn't been moving west as the GFDL predicted. Ophelia keeps drifting northward and each GFDL run simply notes the new position and takes it westward again. That could happen, but the GFDL hasn't exactly been on the money so far.

I would note though that the GFDL called Katrina well. That's the way of it with the tropics, some years the GFDL is accurate, in other the UKMET outperforms them all, or the Euro, or the Canadian. You never know, you just try to consider each models strengths and weaknesses.

The thing is that there just isn't anything to "steer" Ophelia at the moment. The building high pressure ridge looks pretty certain to prevent it moving too far northward, which it would otherwise do, but given that what WILL it do? As you can tell, no one is sure. I suspect the north/northeast movement followed by a loop southward and back west to the Florida coast in 4-6 days will be the result, but it's anyone's guess right now.

My son is in Florida now, at Disneyworld. Is there any danger to the area?

And probably not in the long term either. The storm is quite weak still and already lifting above the Orlando area. The only possible danger to them is if it does loop around in the Atlantic offshore but if it did that it would be days before landfall and Orlando is tucked well inland in any case.

Last year saw some rather severe hurricanes strafe the Orlando area but it's position inland kept it from suffering too badly. He'll be fine.

You took a load off my mind. :)

NT

To the best of my knowledge your son isn't in any more danger than me and I don't feel I am in danger...

I was worried when I started hearing about potential hurricanes. My ex is a freeperish morAn and probably isn't watching the weather while they're there. I'm not kidding, they would too long to try to leave. I had visions in my head of a maternal rescue mission to Florida. :D