ATL GUSTAV: Tropical Depression - Discussion

[shah8]

The GFDL and HWRF both overstrengthen storms frequently, often by crazy amounts. The tropical globals which are better with intensity - GFS, UKM, and NOGAPS - don't see Gustav becoming particularly strong, so this is likely one of those situations where the GFDL and HWRF are being overly bullish.

Ioke is the classic example.

However, while I certainly would not ever believe that these tracks would verify, what I *did* take from this is that Gustav will be very, very strong, absent every tiny bit of disruption possible, from Haiti to Jamaica to Cuba. The thing to remember about the HWRF is that if the *path* verifies, then the odds truly are too good for large, very strong cat 3 or 4 hurricane impact. Even so, I still remember Camille and her top winds. Unlikely as heck, but still possible.

[Meso]

WHAT!? you did not just put nogaps,GFS and Ukmet ahead of GFDL for intensity!? Of late the GFS has completely missed some large storms, as in nothing. Or it shows pressures of 1004 when a system is already below 990. GFS is good for other things, but I defnitely wouldn't want to trust it with intensity, NOGAPS is useless with intensity too, maybe not the high resolution versions, but I've never seen a storm drop below 990mb on that model even when the storm was a strong hurricane, same goes for the Ukmet.. Unless the values look totally different from the area where I look at my runs from, seen it rarely deepen to anything near what reality pans out to be.

GFDL, does over do intensity often. But it does so less than those other models under-do intensity. Or so it has appeared to me over the past few years

[fasterdisaster]

QUESTION: Do GFDL and HWRF do better forecasting sea level pressures or the actual wind speeds?

[wxmann_91]

QUESTION: Do GFDL and HWRF do better forecasting sea level pressures or the actual wind speeds?

Neither. They both suck.
Although I personally use the pressures.

[Derek Ortt]

The GFDL and HWRF both overstrengthen storms frequently, often by crazy amounts. The tropical globals which are better with intensity - GFS, UKM, and NOGAPS - don't see Gustav becoming particularly strong, so this is likely one of those situations where the GFDL and HWRF are being overly bullish.

what are you talking about? Those are NOT tropical globals (there is no such thing) and those 3 most certainly are not used ver batem for intensity. GFS doesn't see the system initially, which is why it does now develop

[Derek Ortt]

QUESTION: Do GFDL and HWRF do better forecasting sea level pressures or the actual wind speeds?

Neither. They both suck.
Although I personally use the pressures.

Don't use the HWRF pressure! It's NOT from the direct model ouput. It is a calculated variable (and I have heard is wrong)

[Derek Ortt]

Looks like Gustav wants early retirement instead of a USA vacation

this think looks hung up near the mountains. We may see totals over 30 inches on the SW Peninsula due to the overnight stall

[Cyclenall]

I love this part of the NHC discussion:

THE AVERAGE MOTION OVER THE PAST 6 HOURS IS 290/07...ALTHOUGH THE
MOTION OVER THE PAST 3 HOURS HAS BEEN ALMOST DUE WEST. THE PRIMARY
STEERING MECHANISM FOR THE NEXT 5 DAYS WILL BE THE LARGE MID- TO
UPPER-LEVEL ANTICYCLONE CENTERED OVER THE FLORIDA STRAITS...WHICH
IS FORECAST TO AMPLIFY NORTHWARD OVER THE SOUTHEASTERN U.S. AND AN
UPPER-LEVEL TROUGH OVER THE NORTHWESTERN GULF IS ALSO EXPECTED TO
BE A PLAYER AND ACT TO SLOW DOWN GUSTAV BY DAY 5.

Link: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MI ... 0306.shtml

Since when did they start writing like that .

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

It appears to becoming better organized as it moves farther from Hati over the last few hours. We will see if the convection can wrap.

[bahamaswx]

GFDL wipes the Cayman islands away.

They're pretty well experienced with majors down there.

[mpic]

It will be interesting indeed to see how Texas handles the traffic if an evacuation is called. I know nothing about traffic control, but I do know that I have to drive for 45 minutes before I reach the contraflow lanes and people in Galveston have to drive for an hour and those drive times are in normal driving time terms. IMO they should have started the contraflow on the south side of Houston rather than on the north side to get more out quicker. I45 dead ends in Galveston, so why didn't they thin of the people most in danger first and figure out a contraflow down here? What it does is force us to make decision to leave way before it might be necessary and waste a lot of money and time off work.

Yes, I'd rather be safe, broke and fired from my job than dead ,but it really creates a problem.

[Derek Ortt]

GFDL wipes the Cayman islands away.

They're pretty well experienced with majors down there.

GFDL decided to go the maximum casualties route

cat 2 winds in the center of Havana and a worse than the NO Hurricane Pam drill for final landfall (the Pam drill was for a cat 3 striking directly, not just east of the city... http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/02/ ... index.html 60,000 deaths were projected for a cat 3 striking directly in NO... basically a Myanmar)

[attallaman]

It will be interesting indeed to see how Texas handles the traffic if an evacuation is called. I know nothing about traffic control, but I do know that I have to drive for 45 minutes before I reach the contraflow lanes and people in Galveston have to drive for an hour and those drive times are in normal driving time terms. IMO they should have started the contraflow on the south side of Houston rather than on the north side to get more out quicker. I45 dead ends in Galveston, so why didn't they thin of the people most in danger first and figure out a contraflow down here? What it does is force us to make decision to leave way before it might be necessary and waste a lot of money and time off work.

Yes, I'd rather be safe, broke and fired from my job than dead ,but it really creates a problem.

I was in Katy during Rita and personally witnessed from my hotel lobby the massive traffic jams on I-10 as people tried to evacuate Houston heading west, their cars overheating, running out of gas, the families with children desperate for a bottle of water or a restroom to use when there were none. It got kind of scary at my hotel that day which I believe was either the Thursday or Friday before Rita made landfall east of there near TX/LA on Saturday.

It took my aunt who lives in Pasadena over 6 hours to get from her house to our hotel, she was on her way to Austin but her car developed mechanical trouble, her A.C. went out so we let her stay with us in our suite at the Marriott. If Gustav threatens the Houston area and the order is given for a mandatory evacuation do you think those who will need to evacuate will evacuate or will they choose to stay home this time to avoid going through a repeat of what they went through when they attempted to evacuate during Rita? My aunt said if an order was issued to evacuate she wouldn't do it. She'd stay home and take her chances with the storm at her home in Pasadena.

[KWT]

Well Gustav seems to have slowed right down overnight in the weak steering currents and thus unwind itself to some extent overland though recently a big convective blow up once again has developed on the SE side.

As Derek said this stall has probably been the worst case for Haiti, I dread to think of how many mudslides there will be.

Also I would think whilst it may delay the strengthening every chance of this becoming a cat-4/5 still in the NW Caribbean and S gulf.

[mpic]

It will be interesting indeed to see how Texas handles the traffic if an evacuation is called. I know nothing about traffic control, but I do know that I have to drive for 45 minutes before I reach the contraflow lanes and people in Galveston have to drive for an hour and those drive times are in normal driving time terms. IMO they should have started the contraflow on the south side of Houston rather than on the north side to get more out quicker. I45 dead ends in Galveston, so why didn't they thin of the people most in danger first and figure out a contraflow down here? What it does is force us to make decision to leave way before it might be necessary and waste a lot of money and time off work.

Yes, I'd rather be safe, broke and fired from my job than dead ,but it really creates a problem.

I was in Katy during Rita and personally witnessed from my hotel lobby the massive traffic jams on I-10 as people tried to evacuate Houston heading west, their cars overheating, running out of gas, the families with children desperate for a bottle of water or a restroom to use when there were none. It got kind of scary at my hotel that day which I believe was either the Thursday or Friday before Rita made landfall east of there near TX/LA on Saturday.

It took my aunt who lives in Pasadena over 6 hours to get from her house to our hotel, she was on her way to Austin but her car developed mechanical trouble, her A.C. went out so we let her stay with us in our suite at the Marriott. If Gustav threatens the Houston area and the order is given for a mandatory evacuation do you think those who will need to evacuate will evacuate or will they choose to stay home this time to avoid going through a repeat of what they went through when they attempted to evacuate during Rita? My aunt said if an order was issued to evacuate she wouldn't do it. She'd stay home and take her chances with the storm at her home in Pasadena.

Hard to say. I live 6 miles from the Bay in a mobile home, so I will go and I would bet that those on the Island will go also. The evac was horrible. When I left, a direct hit was predicted on the Island and my area was under mandatory. I left when I was told to, but it took 24 hours to get 100 miles. By the time we got there, the track had changed and I was in the eye. I made that trip with no a/c and frequently got out and dumped water on my head! When I returned, I the people I work with were ticked off that I went on a road trip while they restocked shelves and acted like I was off having a good time even though we were w/o food and water for 3 days and no gas at all in the county. Don't care....I'm leaving.

And I didn't get paid, either.

[xironman]

Pressure at 997

[KWT]

That GFDL is a pretty scary run, NO is right in the eastern eyewall.

Still the key thing to watch now is whether there is any south of west motion on Gustav over the next 36hrs and how quickly it moves into the high heat content. I've got the feeling that thongs could get pretty juicy once it does get into the higher heat content but we shall see, we've it happen countless times before sadly.

xironman, thats a little lower then the last recon report correct?

[xironman]

Yeah,

The 5am advisory came in at 998, so we appear headed down hill again.

[KWT]

Though I note Derek does state there may have been some decoupling occuring on the recon thread which is interesting, sort of to be expected given the land its been stuck on. I think it will be only slowly strnegthening the next 18hrs as it reorganises itself.

[TreasureIslandFLGal]

The longer she stalls, the more likely the synoptic setup will be different down the road when he gets into the gulf. That descending trough may pan out to be stronger, or the ridge could move or break down a bit over the weekend. All points in the gulf need to still keep an eye out for this.

Many may not like the VIPIR models, but they have proven pretty good a few days out. They were the only models that nailed Charley's turn ahead of time into Punta Gorda a few years back, so I do consider what they have to say.

We're still a few days out, so the game rules aren't even defined yet. But we all agree that Gustav will be remembered by someone along the gulf coast.

It sickens me to see what this is already doing to oil/gas prices too. *sigh

The US economy doesn't need a major hurricane disrupting those supplies and causing another Katrina-like recovery requirement. We still have very limited National Guard and Reservist capabilities right now to be able to react appropriately. At least some lessons were learned last time from Katrina....so hopefully if it goes towards NO, buses will be better utilized and folks that can, WILL evacuate.