Posts from — August 2007

At 10AM CDT Dean is maintaining 145 mph sustained winds with gust to 180. It is currently moving West [280°] at 18 mph.

The western peninsula of Haiti is still experiencing tropical storm force winds, and so is the eastern half of Jamaica. The storm is on track for the eye to pass just to the South of Jamaica which will bring hurricane force winds to most, if not all, of the island. It will be bad, but not as bad as it could be with a direct hit. Jamaica has shutdown its electrical grid across the island, and is shutting down water system pumps in areas subject to flooding.

Currently the Cayman Islands can expect tropical storm force winds.

Dean has a 7-9-foot surge and is generating large waves that are pounding coastlines. Combined with the intense rain, water and erosion are dangerous components of any storm. Landslides are very possible.

Once passed the islands and in the warmer waters of the northwestern Caribbean, Dean is expect to gain strength and become a Category 5 hurricane before hitting the Yucatan peninsula of Mexican around Bahia de la Ascensión. There are multiple archæological sites and a nature reserve in that area.

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

Orlando Sentinel: Cops ask for guns, get missile launcher

Orlando emptied its bureau drawers and closets Friday of more than 300 unwanted guns — and one surface-to-air missile launcher.

The shoulder-fired weapon showed about 6 p.m. when an Ocoee man drove to the Florida Citrus Bowl to trade the 4-foot-long launcher for size-3 Reebok sneakers for his daughter.

Sarasota Herald-Tribune: It’s the stuff of horror: a bay jaunt, and a shark

It was only the seventh reported unprovoked shark bite in Sarasota County since 1882, and the second one this year, according to the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.
…

The boat was isolated, the wind was light and there was little light other than the green glow from the algae when the swimmers or other fish stirred the water.

What’s the matter with that girl, didn’t she see Jaws? The 6-foot bull shark that munched on her did, and knew that it had to do its duty to sharks everywhere – when a 20-year-old girl takes a nighttime swim in your waters, you are required to bite her. [It’s part of the code of sharks, lawyers and politicians are exempt.]

As predicted, Dean is going through an eyewall replacement cycle, and while the maximum sustained winds have only dropped to 145 mph, the eye “wobbled” and is tracking more to the West than West Northwest at 17 mph. This is good news because it brings the track down so that it now appears it will pass Jamaica to the South rather than going right over it, and it will also pass to the South of the Caymans and Cozumel. With a 60-mile wind radius for hurricane force winds, it obviously makes a difference how far to the South, but it looks better than a direct hit.

This is obviously not good news for people further South on the Yucatan, but there are fewer people to evacuate than there were.

With hurricanes you take the news as being double-edged – if you dodge the bullet, someone else gets hit.

Dr. Jeff Masters writes that Dean appears to be going through an eyewall replacement, which is good news in the short term, but means that it isn’t likely to happen again before smacking the hell out of Jamaica.

His current assessment: “worst hurricane strike on Jamaica for over a century,” “could rival Ivan as the Cayman’s worst hurricane strike of the past century,” “civil defense is so good in Cuba that I don’t expect any loss of life,” and “it looks very bad for Cancun and Cozumel.”

It isn’t the wind, it’s the water. It’s the flooding from the rains that cause most of the deaths in hurricanes – except for those people “protected” by Corps of Engineers levees and floodwalls [my snark].

Dean is South of the Dominican Republic bringing tropical storm force winds and rain. Southwestern Puerto Rico is still being hit. As it moves WNW at 17 mph along the coast the the winds will pick-up with the Southwestern tip of Haiti receiving hurricane force winds and torrential rains as the day wears on.

Dean currently has 150 mph sustained winds with 185 mph gusts. It is moving WNW at 17 mph. It will probably become a Category 5 hurricane later today before it hits Jamaica. The current forecast has it hitting Jamaica, the Caymans, and Cozumel as a Category 5 with sustained winds of 155+ mph.

With storms this big it is normal for them to undergo eyewall replacements, which are the equivalent of stopping and taking a short break before going back to work. Dean may drop in intensity for a short period, but it has everything it needs to spins right back up.

Ana Maria at A.M. in the Morning! remembers the 38^th anniversary of hurricane Camille hitting the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Until Katrina, Camille was the storm everyone talked about with good reason. When I passed through the area after the storm there were 60-foot steel fishing boats on the north side of the road that broke loose and went over 6-foot fences on the storm surge.

53^rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron [USAFR]
403^rd Wing, Keesler AFB, Biloxi, Mississippi

The officers and airmen, men and women of the 53^rd WRS are once again flying out of Keesler AFB, having lost their facilities, and in some case their homes to hurricane Katrina. They fly WC-130J’s into the eyes of tropical cyclones from the center of the Atlantic to the Hawaiian Islands. They are part of the Air Force Reserve, not the regular Air Force, and frankly I would prefer flying into anti-aircraft zones than the eyes of hurricanes at 10,000 feet and below.

The accuracy of current hurricane forecasting is dependent on the readings these people take in the center of these storms.

As of 8PM EDT Dean has become a Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of 135 mph and gusts to 155. It continues to track to the West at 18 mph and is getting bigger and nastier as it moves through warm water and light wind shear.

Anyone who can, should get out of Dean’s way. Puerto Rico and Hispaniola can expect tropical storm force winds and rain. Jamaica and the Cayman Islands are now in Dean’s path if nothing changes. You do not want to be on an island smaller than Australia when something like Dean is in the area.

Be aware that when a storm gets as big and powerful as Dean, it can make sudden moves. It is like a spinning top, and can be deflected by relatively minor force. It is currently being steered by a high pressure ridge. If that ridge weakens, Dean can make an abrupt turn to the north and then east, the directions it would normally go on its own. If you are anywhere near this thing you have to pay attention.

Update: at 11PM EDT, Dean is south of Puerto Rico with tropical storm force winds brushing the coast.  It is a much more circular storm and growing larger,  The current sustained winds are 145 mph and it continues to move West.

Barely able to survive on the pittance the government pays [$168K/year], Tony Snow is resigning as the Presidential Press Secretary to return to his old job as Presidential Press Secretary at Faux News.

A while back the military went paranoid on use of the Internet by the troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The story was they were a danger to operational security posing details of operations in their e-mails and on their blogs, so everything had to be screened and sites had to be blocked.

Unfortunately for this line of reasoning they started monitoring everything and as Noah of Danger Room writes: Army Audits: Official Sites, Not Blogs, Breach Security.

It would appear that in the official efforts to the catapult the propaganda the military PR people are too often violating operational security. When they report “successes,” they are providing too much background. I have to assume that this is being done by contractors, because the actual members of the military who work in the information field are very careful about this.

I’m forced to conclude that it wasn’t a concern for OpSec, but a concern that unspun truth would get out that prompted the clamp down.

Lucky break for Martinique as Dean slipped by just to the south so that hurricane force winds only hit the southern half of the island. It is still a Cat 2 with 105 mph winds and still heading West at 20 mph.

The forecast further out is changing which could be good news for Cozumel, but bad news for Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and the Texas Gulf Coast. Two of the models have shifted north bringing the storm as a Cat 4 directly over Jamaica and the Caymans and entering the Gulf just north of the Yucatan as a major hurricane.

Update: At 1:45PM EDT Dean was upgraded to Cat 3 with 125 mph winds and is expected to become a Cat 4 later today. It is still headed West at 21 mph.

Working Hard

You have bony legs, Ex.

[Editor: Income and Excise are in the early stages of training for Synchronized Sleeping in the next Cat Olympics. They are a little unclear as to what a heart looks like.]

Friday Ark

Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog notes:

MEXICO CITY — Authorities are sounding the alarm about an influx of assault rifles, armor-piercing pistols and fragmentation grenades from the United States, weapons that they say are increasingly being used to kill police and soldiers fighting drug cartels.

It sounds like the US is proving weapons to narco-terrorists who are attacking Mexican law enforcement. Maybe the Mexican government should classify the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms a terrorist organization?