Burnt Orange Report

Watching Ivan

By Jim Dallas

Here's something else to worry about: The forecast models over at the National Hurricane Center seem to have started diverging again as to the track of Hurricane Ivan; it's getting to be a little unclear about where this thing is going. The latest strike probabilities table shows a 10-to-15-percent probability all the way from New Orleans to Key West. And the probability for Galveston has risen to 3 percent (tepid, yes, but it was essentially zero at this time yesterday).

A look at the water-vapor loop I think indicates why the sudden uncertainty is coming in to play: there's a heck of a lot of swirls and eddies out over the Gulf! Particularly look at (what I believe are) clockwise (presumably high pressure) rotations over southern Georgia and the Yucatan, and a dry, counterclockwise rotation over Texas. I wish I really knew what all this meant...

At any rate, as somebody who has spent a lot of nervous summers watching the Gulf: the Texas coast is probably safe, but it's not a bad idea to start paying lots of attention to this (Category 4) storm.