Gus is interesting, but make sure you look east

Gustav will be the big story over the weekend, but please keep your eyes looking east too.

Gus made landfall on the southwestern coast of Haiti yesterday as a hurricane. He has since weakened to a tropical storm with 60 MPH winds due to land interactions. The current forecast has Gus moving along the southern Cuban coast, cross the extreme western tip of Cuba, and then essentially head for the Texas/Louisiana Gulf Coast as a major hurricane. Buy...Gas...Now...

The bigger local threat is from the broad area of low pressure several hundred miles northeast of the northern Leeward islands. This area is expected to develop later this week as the upper-level winds become more favorable in that part of the world. While most of the models recurve this system between 65 and 70 degrees west longitude (i.e., well off our coast) we do have one model that indicates a threat to our area in about 8 days. You don't need to board up now, but you do need to watch it.

Fay gone, next one coming?

The Hurricane Center has finally issued it's last advisory for Fay. The remnants of Fay will continue to drop more rain than most people need over the southern US. The forecasts diverge a fair bit regarding the length that the remnants will hang around the southern US.

There are actually two areas of investigation in the Atlantic. I've been looking for the last couple days at the southern of these two areas, near the coast of Venezuela. The second is near 23N and 52W and honestly appears to be too far north to cause any harm to us and is moving into an area of increased shear, though it still bears watching. The first, southern area continues to be of more concern. The models remain in two camps, one well south of us (not too big a deal) and one just a tiny bit east of us (bigger deal). Either way, we expect this to become stronger over the next few days since the shear is low, and the water is warm. For now, I'm thinking the southern route makes more sense, but I'm not entirely convinced yet.