Joe B and Emily

[Kelarie]

I know. Sometimes I get so tired of hearing about him. But, if you want a funny picture of him, go to my hottest meterologist poll. Somebody posted a funny picture of him with muscles and everything. Another pic he got those fuzzy 70's style Elvis sideburns.

What's really scary is that the muscle pic of him is apparently real. I've seen a lot of pics of him like that (thanks, in part, to Rainstorm). It's freaky.

and that is not just my migraine talking either

[Portastorm]

The NHC…back in 1988…did not post warnings for south Texas during Gilbert. Accuweather, however, made a huge deal about Gilbert getting up there and caused all sorts of problems.

As for JB’s long-term forecasting powers…well before I write this didn’t I hear talk of Emily getting up the east coast over last weekend (1933 all over again or something)? If that’s true…and I think it is…then he’s basically covered the entire coast of the US on this storm. Hard to miss when you do that.

Oh yes…and North Carolina is still waiting for Frances.

MW

I don't doubt your knowledge good sir... however, I covered Gilbert for the Austin newspaper and wrote articles on it for 5 consecutive days.

I very clearly remember NHC forecasting Gilbert to "eventually turn to the northwest." I seem to recall that forecast being issued while Gilbert was wreaking havoc on the Yucatan. It was a 3-day out kind of thing. Once the storm crossed the peninsula and it was clear it was not moving NW, they kept with the steady state track.

However, the whole Galveston thing was compounded when city officials decided to evacuate the island and did so, I think, based more on Accuweather's forecast than NHC's.

Yes, I 100% agree there was no question that the Galveston area was in the long term cone of concern (although at the time there was no such monster). By the way, I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on how that all went down from there.

Starting late on Sept 12, 1988 the general Galveston area was just starting to fall within the 72 hour forecast track point.

Then, on the 13th, things looked ominous for the greater area, no question about it. Here are the 72 hour forecast positions for the 4 packages generated on the 13th (GMT) (Galveston, rounding, sits about at 29N 95W.):

1988091300 OFCL 72 24 93
1988091306 OFCL 72 25.5 94.5
1988091312 OFCL 72 28.5 95.5
1988091318 OFCL 72 27.5 93.5

This continued for half of the day on the 14th, but by the second half of the day the NHC had shifted away from a track close to Galveston, taking Gilbert significantly westward.

Finally, the watch/warning summary from the NHC’s report on Gilbert shows watches/warnings extended up to Port Arthur, TX which while close…left Galveston outside of the watches/warnings.

ftp://ftp.nhc.noaa.gov/pub/storm_archiv ... elim12.gif

So while I agree, Galveston was under the long-range threat cone (and in the middle for a day)…they never actually got a watch out of the deal. My bigger concern was Accuweather and the mayor clearing out the city when there wasn’t even a watch.

MW

I will defer the "how did it go in Galveston" question to my S2K colleagues in that area. From my perpsective in Austin and, again, covering the storm for the newspaper ... the evacuation order was ultimately roundly criticized since Galveston was technically out of the danger zone. And I remember there was a significant financial cost to the whole thing ... the bottom line, eh?

I'm glad you brought this up as I had to go back and search the archives to make sure my memory was accurate!

Michael