Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Hurricane Forecast 2010

June 1st marks the beginning of hurricane season and if they don't get the mess in the Gulf of Mexico cleaned up, can you imagine how messy that's going to be. And I wonder, with a powerful storm surge, how far inland the oil will be carried. I find myself checking about 2 times a day to see what the latest is on the gushing oil situation, just hoping to one day read that they have it contained and nearly stopped, but it still sounds like it's going to be several days or weeks before we get the good news. There is so much of the Gulf of Mexico that is closed to fishing because the oil continues to spread, but according to NOAA, 68% is still fishable. What a mess and they can't get it cleaned up fast enough.

Speaking of hurricanes, the outlook for the upcoming season has been released, and it calls for 14-23 named storms (which means the storm would acquire winds of 39 mph or higher), 8-14 hurricanes (winds of at least 74 mph), and 3-7 major hurricanes (reaching Category 3, 4, or 5). I am always a little skeptical of these forecasts, because so many variables this far in advance are unknown, but based on the warmer than normal water, and light winds aloft (due to El Nino influence), it sounds like there will be plenty of tropical weather to look at this summer and early fall.

Have a great week.

2 comments:

distimpson said...

yeah, been worried about hurricanes, haven't had much good luck so far, nightmare if this goes to august. in hind site, maybe the relief wells should be in place before they start drilling? backup blowout valves? learning the hard way.

Unknown said...

Ross is it possible that the continued oil spill will move along the east coast and cause disruption in the natural evaporation of water from the ocean? With this in mind, could this cause weather pattern disruption in the near future?

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