It’s amazing how much better the Hedgemony seems to respond during election years than the year after. 😈

I feel bad about not mentioning Invest 97L and Invest 98L that are out in the Atlantic ready to come on “stage”, but two storms at a time is enough.

You know that you are a true hurricane geek when you know what the Fujiwhara effect is. You will see if you get two storms in the Gulf at the same time, and, while intellectually interesting, it is not good for life or property.

How Far Is It is a very useful site if you want to know the distance between any two points on the planet, but I really want to swat that moth or butterfly that flits around. It is the reason that I know that Gustav was 250 miles South-Southwest of me at 7PM.

Oh, well, back to waiting.

Here’s a link to Katrina in the Weather Underground’s archive.

At 1PM CDT on August 28^th Katrina was at 26.5 North 88.6 West with sustained winds of 175 mph and a central pressure of 902 mb, an all out Category 5 Hauptsturmfury with a 250 mile tropical storm wind radius and a 150 mile hurricane wind radius. It came ashore near the Pearl River affecting the Gulf Coast from Panama City, Florida to South of Lake Charles, Louisiana.

I’ve been getting a lot of Google searches for this.

Updated: I located the links to the National Hurricane Center advisories. They are in caps because they started out on the Teletype 33 terminals which only had capital letters.

I forgot to mention that two-thirds of the windfield is on the East side of the storm and the Northeast quadrant is where the strongest winds from the East, Southeast, and South are located.

Position: 27.8 N 88.8 W. [1 AM CDT]
Movement: Northwest [315°] near 16 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 115 mph.
Wind Gusts: 140 mph.
Hurricane Wind Radius: 70 miles.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 220 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 955 mb.

It is about 125 miles Southeast of Port Fourchon, Louisiana and the pressure is up a little.

The passage over Cuba affected it more than anticipated, but it is back over very warm water and is broadening. For comparison: Katrina’s hurricane radius was 150 miles and tropical storm winds went out to 250 miles.

Position: 23.7 N 72.2 W. [1 AM CDT]
Movement: West [280°] near 2 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 50 mph.
Wind Gusts: 65 mph.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 105 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 997 mb.

It is about 100 miles North-Northwest of the Bahamas.

This is a very large system in a very uncertain steering environment.