After battling the “dry” tropical air along its route from Haiti, Cuba, Florida, to Louisiana, Isaac has finally become a hurricane with the required 64+ knots 1-minute sustained near-surface winds. Numerical models finally expressed some certainty on a Louisiana coastal landfall, but diverged significantly on intensity. There is also some question about the ability of Isaac to penetrate far inland away from the frictionally convergent swamps. A major flood event is underway.
Click image to animate it over several hoursThis tracking map is in high definition (updates every 3-4 hours, click to enlarge)
Now WeatherBell’s track map via Ryan Maue: (click to enlarge)
NHC:
Track map in HiDef – click to enlarge:
More…plus signup for free hurricane bulletins.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/tropical-cyclone/
Has anyone put together a mosaic of Isaac track projections over the last 3 days? It might be exceptionally eye opening to many who believe model based “science” to be infalable….
Map label comment:
Many American viewers understand wind speeds in mph. Guessing they want that shown.
Guessing many do not know knots or would want those speeds converted to mph so they would understand them.
Tom in Worc.(usa) says:
August 27, 2012 at 8:53 pm
My thought was that since you had an area already destroyed, might as well let whoever owns it get out what they could recover, then fill it by with dredging material from Lake Ponchatrain until it was no longer a bowl.
On one hand, you would have one hell of a sheltered deep water port, and whoever opted to rebuild in the filled area would have less to sweat when the next big storm came along.
Ben says:
August 27, 2012 at 9:38 pm
I’m American, I understand knots just fine. It’s over water, it’s nautical, most of the reports are from vessels that operate over water (Ships, C-130, Bouys etc.) Why juxtapose units back and forth when comparing various data feeds?
Ben says:
August 27, 2012 at 9:38 pm
Map label comment:
Many American viewers understand wind speeds in mph. Guessing they want that shown.
Guessing many do not know knots or would want those speeds converted to mph so they would understand them.
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Being the bastion of freedom, has its faults 🙂
Ben says:
“Many American viewers understand wind speeds in mph. Guessing they want that shown.”
Just add 15%. Like figuring a tip at a restaurant
All I can say, is be safe.
[snip – tone it down please ~moderator]
And who are “we'” Tom? Not any of your tax dollars, I bet.
Hoping for a positive outcome, perhaps Isaac can bring some much needed rain to those of us in the drought plagued midwest. I just hop it isn’t at the expense of those in the coastal regions.
D Johnson says:
August 27, 2012 at 10:43 pm
“… I just hop it isn’t at the expense of those in the coastal regions.”
We’ll get over it, we always do. The insurance companies will pay for the rebuilding of the houses, and condos on the perpetually shifting sandbar known as the barrier islands and the rest of us will pay higher premiums because it cost so flipping much to keep rebuilding houses and condos on overgrown sandbars known as barrier islands and …
You get the picture.
GeoLurking says:
August 27, 2012 at 9:50 pm
Ben says:
August 27, 2012 at 9:38 pm
Many American viewers understand wind speeds in mph.
I’m American, I understand knots just fine. It’s over water, it’s nautical, most of the reports are from vessels that operate over water (Ships, C-130, Bouys etc.) Why juxtapose units back and forth when comparing various data feed
*****************
Not to belabor the obvious, but why not display units with slashes, so us dumb Yanks can immediately glom onto terms we can immediately relate to?
That YOU understand knots is meaningless. The question is, do most Americans understand them?
Miss Grundy says some trivial stuff intended to incite.
Perhaps you missed the original inference that Americans are too [lacking] to be able to comprehend something such as “knots.”
I reiterate, knots is the standard measure of many things nautical (having to do with the sea). Since so many products dealing with tropical systems are stated in knots, it would be a bit cumbersome jumping back and forth from one unit to another. In products dumbed down for the general public, such as the Weather Channel (in it’s current incarnation) or your local “news” head, sure, it make sense. But a reference product such as this, no. Pick a scale and stick with it. Consistency of presentation goes a long way in the usefulness of a product.
Whether or disagree or not doesn’t matter. It’s not your product. If you need a different scale, convert it. Simple.
Knots is the maritime unit for speed. It is how ships record their speed, it is used for currents and winds over the ocean and for aircraft. The reason the forecasts use knots is that when the storm is at sea, it is described in nautical units. Once it makes landfall, winds are described in either MPH or KPH. It isn’t a metric thing or a foreign unit, it is nautical miles per hour. Once it crosses over to land, it uses statute miles per hour (the ones you are used to driving). A nautical mile at sea is a little longer than a statute mile on land.
They use these units so navigators of vessels at sea can calculate the storm’s course and their own course and make sure they stay out of the way. A ship moving at 20 kts in a certain direction wants to know how fast the storm is moving in knots and in which direction. It is so they don’t have to convert units and possibly put themselves in harm’s way.
Isaac will barely be a hurricane at landfall, and nothing NOLA shouldn’t be able to handle. This is a big wet storm, but its nothing like Katrina. Frequency of storms of this scale is much higher than the Katrinas and should be be considered a frequent, if not common occurrence, along the gulf. If NOLA and the adjacent areas can’t handle this one, it IS time to relocate the area, finally, and let the delta be.
NHC has been almost desparate in its advisories to get to call this one a hurricane, as if there is any real difference between 74 and 75 mph. max wind speed. I expect it to break up and dissipate quite quickly once its low pressure centre hits land and the dangerous semi-circle runs out of fuel. Isaac dried out quite quickly when the DS crossed Florida, and I’m betting it’ll do the same when it gets to Louisiana. For the amount of money they keep pouring into NOLA, they could have built a more robust seaport many times over out of the flood plain of the delta.
As of 6:30 this morning the centre of rotation is 100 mi from the outer barrier sand and 178mii from downtown New Orleans. Radar is not picking up a lot of rain in the leading edge. If it behaves like it did over Fla, most of the cloud over the SW quadrant will dry out as it rotates into the gulf coast. Still just a big sloppy storm.
New Orleans is older than the United States and I’m pretty confident it will survive this storm. I’ve lived in hurricane areas for two-thirds of my life, including New Orleans. The first one I remember was Hazel, I walked home from school during the eye of the storm. You get strong winds, lots of rain and some flooding. If you choose to live in these areas you prepare, evacuate as necessary and then rebuild. Katrina was a bad storm compounded by bad decisions by government at all levels, starting with the first responders (local and state). New Orleans wasn’t the only place hit by the storm, but you would hardly know that from the news.
If you want massive flooding from a hurricane, try Floyd. My home town was a 100 miles inland and had water 10-15′ deep. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Floyd
Hyping big storms makes great news sales and politics.
Good sequential imagery of U.S. cloud cover with a less-than four hour
lag for the last frame can be found at:
http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/us_comp/us_comp.html
Computer models are only as good as their initial conditions.
And yes that goes for the GW Models double.
Does anyone know where I can collect all of the 4 hour updates to the NOAA NHC Track Map since Issac became a Tropical Storm? Thanks…
I would love to see the storm track right and weaken, ending at the edge of the predictions. The water coming from the Mississippi is very polluted and it would be good to watch it gut a major weather feature.
JF
I have been observing several models – the Weather Channel, and one at WeatherBell, since before crossing the Keys. The Weather bell model always showed Isaac headed straight for New Orleans after crossing the Keys.
Meanwhile, Weather Channel model showed a right turn and movement paralleling the Gulf Coast
of Florida. Over the next days and nights, Weather Channel model kept readjusting the proposed path, resulting in more closely mirroring Weatherbell’s, but still predicted a right turn before landfall. Never happened. The Weatherbell model nailed it from day one – Weather Channel was days behind.
A very poor performance by the Weather Channel model. Hurricane Center’s predicted path was also expecting a right turn before landfall – one that never came.
thsi technology is cool
Paul Coppin is correct that NHC is desperately trying to squeeze a Hurrican out of Isaac. I pay very close attention to them and they always overstimate wind speed even when they have actual measurements. It’s simply the NHC culture.
This forecast:
http://vortex.plymouth.edu/hur_dir/hur_pos_nt4.html
shows max wind-speed 85 mph — cat1. A big rainmaker, but not a Katrina.