No matter what happens, it is probably going to rain a lot in Florida

It is raining cats and dogs in Florida, thanks to Tropical Storm Hanna. Ike remains a real threat. Josephine is a giant question mark. Details below the fold.

Hanna is a really large tropical storm that is eventually ... by tomorrow AM ... be more or less over land, where it will quickly move north/northeast not straying very far from the coast. It will probably jump over the coast at least once (its current track has its center going over Cape Cod) but that hardly maters as it is so large. When it passes cape cod, if it is still strong enough (which it likely will be) the folks in eastern New England will start calling it a 'noreaster.'

If you live on the east coast of the US or southeastern Canada, you are well advised to check your local forcast for flooding related advisories. If you are in South Carolina or North Carolina, you've got problems coming along the coast with tropical storm level winds. No ocean fishing Saturday, I'm afraid.

Ike is currently a weakening Category Three storm, expected to strengthen (after weakening) over the next day or so. So figure it to be a Category Two or Three over the next few days. The Leeward Islands are threatened.

The most important question at hand is this: Is Ike going to spend a lot of time over Cuba or not? If it does, expect it to not be a major hurricane when and if it strikes the US coast, but feel bad for Cuba. If not, then Ike will likely remain a major hurricane.

Hanna, pushing quickly to the north, is acting (sort of) like a watron rushing through the swinging door of a kitchen. The door is going to swing back and forth a couple of times. This door represents a high pressure ridge that Hanna is plowing through (sort of) that will either be there (the closed door) or not (an open door) when Ike gets to that point. That is pretty much impossible to predict at that point, but it will determine where Ike will go ashore, if at all.

With Gustav, the predicted eye landfall never varied more than a couple of hundred miles at most, and the actual landfall was very accurately predicted days before (as accurately as one gets). With Ike, forgedaboutit. The intensity and the track in three to five days is simply unknown. On Tuesday morning, this hurricane could be grazing northern Cuba and weakening, or heading towards southern Florida at Category Two or Three strength, or even passing through the gap between Florida and Cuba (but certainly trending north at that point).

My gut feeling is that the Ike is not going to hit Cuba, that it is going to come ashore in southern Florida as a Category One storm, and then pass to the Gulf as a tropical storm and dump a lot of rain on Central Florida and the Panhandle. But don't hold me to that.

Tropical Storm Josephine is trying to do the Phoenix thing. This storm is undergoing all the changes in conditions that tend to dissipate storms in this area, and these conditions will prevail for the next few days. Therefore, Josephine will most likely vaporize (pardon the pun) mid-ocean. Or, it may just barely survive this period of time and enter a region where it can restrengthen. In a sense, Josephine's fate is more uncertain than Ikes, as in four or five days from now it could be either blowing up to Tropical Storm or Hurricane strength, or it could be a cloudy spot on the satellite map.