Running 2012 Hurricane Thread

News here still has it making (second after the Keys) landfall in the Panhandle or Alabama as a Category 2, but it has shifted west and New Orleans is on the edge of the cone.

I think I'm experiencing the first of the feeder bands at my house. I didn't understand why the news guys were telling us to stay home as I sat in my office looking north. Then I went into the kitchen for another cup of coffee, looked out a south facing window and saw what was coming.

It still doesn't sound like it will be that bad in central Palm Beach County as long as no tornados develop. A watch has been issued for the entire day.

 

Prayers to all in the path, whatever it is. Also echo the sentiments regarding rain in the Midwest, they surely need it.

Gas? This hurricane combined with the refinery in Venezuela blowing up, who knows? Except it won't be good.

 

I see it tracking a bit west of New Orleans now in some models. Isn't that really bad as far as storm
surge is concerned?

 

It's shifted a lot west even since I checked a few hours ago.

I thought the "bad" side of a hurricane was the east side.

 

Facebook friend from Nola had a picture of the empty water shelves at Walmart on Tchopitoulas. Mayor is supposed to have presser at 2:45 CDT.

 

It is. But if the hurricane has shifted west of you, you are closest to its east side.

 

Friends in NOLA reporting long lines already forming at gas stations.
Good to see people planning ahead. So many Floridians would be cooking out or sitting back and relaxing with a storm three days out.

 

New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu just said there will be no shelters in the city, not even the Super Dome.

The model that came out this morning had the eastern eye wall literally passing over my apartment some time overnight Tuesday/Wednesday, but it could still drift westward. Anywhere relatively close west of here is bad news for us.

 

I'm wondering if there's a noticeable uptick in people evacuating New Orleans. There's no excuse for people getting caught off guard.

 

The city is also a hell of a lot smaller than it was seven years ago so it's probably easier to get everybody out of town.

 

What's the best site for hurricane path prediction? I've been going to NOAA and they still have Isaac making landfall east of New Orleans.

Edit: So does Wunderground.

 

Slappy will shit all over me for this, but I use the blog from our local weather guy James Spann.

http://www.alabamawx.com/

Usually the projections you see come in two different forms. The "cone of uncertainty" is from the National Huricane Center and is the "official" projection, like you see on the Danger Jim channel. This gets updates every 6 hours (maybe sooner if really close to U.S. landfall).

The "spaghetti strands" is the collection of all the different computer models. As it gets closer, the models tend to cluster together and you get a sense of where the storm is likely to go. The NHC uses this info to make its projection. Of course this time yesterday, the models were almost all saying Destin, and now they're saying Thibodeaux.