” The stretch of the limousine is inversely proportional to the self esteem of the person riding in it” – Dennis Waitley (Damn, I need a smaller car!)
Gustav – a rather “royal” sounding name, more of a Swedish tinge or implication than German, maybe Prussian,….well who really gives a shit now, it’s shaping up faster than I can edit a post!
“Gustav” is the newest member of our “Hurricane of the month club” . In all my years of weather-watching, particularly Hurricane watching, I have never seen a storm change intensities as fast. Yesterday morning at this time it was just becoming sort of a surprise “Tropical Disturbance” off the coast of Haiti and the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean. Then “poof” by 11:00am it’s a “Tropical Depression”, and within an hour it’s a “Tropical Storm”, and while it’s heating up for a run Haiti posted a Hurricane Watch, then Warnings!
Talk about the world , well at least the Caribbean corner of it, getting caught with it’s pants down! The various raw data feeds I get as well as the sites I analyze and follow up on were all in disarray. The “cone” (which is a imaginary cone shape with the tiny end on the storm and then flairing out ahead of the storm to show both the direction the “Guru’s” think it’s going, and the approximate time it will get there) well, it was so big it stretched from the Yucatan Peninsula (Cozumel) all the way past the Florida Keys and Florida into the Atlantic (Professional analysis and my expert opinion? They don’t have a clue who, what, where, or when! It’s a sneaking up on ya’ storm.) So I decided to wait until this morning to fire up the old “Tropical Weather from ‘The Pit’ ” Advisories.
Early estimates yesterday was putting it scooting along at 14 mph, but as of this morning at 5a.m. it’s slowed down to 8mph. The central pressure has fallen significantly from the 1003 millibars of mercury to 984 mbs. That is a steep drop, plus it has already formed a defined “eye” or center, or “hub” around which the winds are flowing, and it’s already giving maximum sustained winds of 75 knots with gusts up to 90knots.
Holy Shit Batman,….it’s gonna be a biggy! They are currently (They being the National Hurricane Center and my other three “guru” sites) are calling for it to move from a Category 1 (74-95 mph winds), to Category 2 (96-110 mph) by tomorrow, then backslide to a 1 as it passes over parts of Haiti, then back to a Category 2 again over open water South of the Island nation of Cuba, and then strengthening to a Category 3 (111-135 mph winds) by Saturday morning and going up what I nicknamed, “the gut”, the space between the far northwestern tip pof Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. So much for intelligent guess work, but then what?
That’s where the plot really thickens. That track puts it flat smack dab in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, over warm water and it’s,…well it’s like releasing the lion into the Colosseum. He sort of wanders around, aimlessly, sizes up the Christians cowering around the edges, does a few stretching exercises, picks a few nice fat juicy ones, and charges! That’s what this one is going to do. So much is going to depend on what we have coming down from the “upper 48” States to block or deflect the steering currents and the positioning of the Jet stream, but I dare say it appears that our last final “big” weekend of the summer what we fondly call “Labor Day Weekend” we WILL be laboring stashing furniture, bringing in anything that can be thrown about, stocking up on bottled water, canned food, shit, I may even get a bottle of Vodka, (for medicinal purposes to clean wounds and all of course 🙂 )
So for today boys and girls we are just going to track it a bit, and start reviewing the continental U.S. weather and see what’s happening. I’ll keep you posted, but frankly this escalation looks formidable and it’s worth keeping an eye on. Obviously when it hits the Gulf all the offshore oil rigs will close down, “Gas prices will shoot up again”, and you can color tourism in Florida officially dead and buried for 2008.
From Weather Central here in “The Pit”,…have a nice day!
(One good thing, it keeps my blood pressure down because I don’t have to listen to all the Democratic National Convention bullshit! YEA!!!
-30-
The Emerald Rose 
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