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  2. Computing Gustav's Path

Computing Gustav's Path

By catdynamics on August 27, 2008.

Every now and then I get a message which informs.

"If your jobs are unfortunately killed by the hurricane..."

"...simulation runs, please let us know and we will refund you the used SUs.
Sorry for the inconvenience."

LONI - the Lousiana Optical Network Initiative - is flushing its computing queue for pre-emptive hurricane modeling, this afternoon, and, I presume, through the weekend.

Current National Hurricane Center path predictions have NOLA right in the center of the predicted path - with landfall late sunday/early monday.
Cone of uncertainty stretches from NW Florida to NE Texas.



Click to enlarge

Looks like it will be category 3 or higher, depending on whether it grazes Cuba.

PS: Interesting supplemental data - summary of forecast for oil/gas interests - and predicted production list

PPS: Aug 28 06:00 forecast - that is Hanna coming in from the Atlantic

There's another major low coming off Africa for later.
Worst case scenario is Gustav mimicking Katrina or Rita, and Hanna copying Andrew.
Best case scenario - Gustav get shredded by Cuban mountains (unlikely) and coming ashore away from a city as a small low category hurricane; and Hanna curving back out to sea and dropping rain on Iceland or UK.

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By Brad Holden (not verified) on 27 Aug 2008 #permalink

Please remember that the cone of projection covers the actual path only 2/3 of the time. That means there is a good 33% chance that the hurricane will fall outside the cone you see on the map. New Orleans needs to be prepared, but so do Houma, Beaumont, Galveston, Houston, etc.

By speedwell (not verified) on 27 Aug 2008 #permalink

Also, the cone is a prediction of the path of the center of the hurricane. Strong winds and heavy rain can easily occur outside of the cone even if the center stays within it.

And while the "cone of projection" has a track record of being right roughly 2/3 of the time, the models for Gustav are actually in pretty good agreement.

(Shouldn't "NE Texas" be E or SE Texas? Can you add a link to the prediction map to embiggen?)