Ernesto coming to visit

First off, apologies to any of you who happened to try and access this blog yesterday. Somehow, the blogger software deleted half of my blog template. Without a template, there's no blog to see. Yes, I realize this is a 21st century version of "the dog ate my homework", but it's all I've got. I've had to reconstruct the template from scratch; please leave me a comment if I haven't reconstructed a link you use/need.

A lot has happened since my last post. The forecast landfall position has shifted east from Mobile to just south and west of Miami. The storm strengthened into a hurricane Sunday morning, but then encountered the rugged terrain of Haiti, and weakened back down to a tropical storm. Ernesto is currently a 50 MPH tropical storm, moving to the NW at 12 MPH with a central pressure of 1002 mb. Landfall near Guantanamo should occur later this morning.

The forecast track drawn by the Hurricane Center this morning has Ernesto moving due north through Florida from southwest of Miami and exiting north of Daytona. I suspect it was a fairly easy track call for them; the computer models were in excellent agreement overnight on this forecast track. This resulted from the extra aircraft data taken last night to measure the winds and pressures of the steering features around Ernesto. Something we watch is the trend in the track forecast. In this case, the trend (since last Friday) has been to move the track further to the east with each forecast package. One can hope the trend will continue to push the track east and off of our coast, placing us on the (theoretically) weaker western edge. This is a possibility, but I wouldn't necessarily plan for it.

The amount of time Ernesto spends along Cuba is the thing to watch today. Of course, the longer he spends on land, the weaker the storm will become. The Cuban terrain is not as rugged as that found in Haiti, so the weakening shouldn't be as dramatic as yesterday. Ernesto is forecast to spend 12-24 hours over Cuba and emerge over the rather warm water there at about 78 degrees west longitude. A little east or west of this spot has implications for the location of landfall in Florida. Then, the longer he spends over these warm waters will determine how strong he'll get before landfall; currently he's forecast to spend 24 hours over warm water and make it back to Cat 1 prior to landfall. Other than land interactions, there are no other apparent inhibiting factors to prevent strengthening.

On this track, Melbourne will experience winds in the 50-60 MPH range during the day on Wednesday. Biggest threat will be the possibility of tornadoes occurring on the eastern edge of the eye, which is forecast to pass just to our west (weather radios are handy in this case). I suspect the causeways and schools will be closed on Wednesday, but these types of decisions won't be made until the Hurricane Center raises some sort of watch or warning for our area; as of 5 AM this morning, they had not yet done so, though it would seem they would need to do so by 5 PM this evening.

Today would be a good day to review that list of storm items you're supposed to have and replenish as needed.