Gustav Preparations Continue

Hurricane Gustav continues churning up the waters and bringing heavy rains to Haiti and Cuba, and it's expected to cross into the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico where it is expected to intensify before making landfall somewhere along the Gulf Coast.

While many of the model tracks still put New Orleans clearly in the cross hairs, the GFDL model, which I've found to be particularly useful, has shifted to the East, into the Alabama coastline. That however runs counter to the official track, which is moving Westward towards the Texas/Louisiana border. It still puts New Orleans at great risk.

Indeed, much of the Gulf Coast remains at risk since the storm hasn't quite made up its mind where it's going to go. Despite advances in technology and predictive abilities, we still have much to learn about these storms and where they may strike next.

UPDATE:
Texas, Louisiana, and Alabama have predeclared states of emergency, in anticipation of Gustav making landfall somewhere along the Gulf Coast. We're going to see whether the past three years of preparations have meant anything and whether state and local authorities have learned lessons from their failures in Katrina. Due to changes in its forward motion, it now looks like landfall might be Monday into Tuesday.

Apparently, Gustav might force the GOP to postpone their convention in Minneapolis because of the threat to the Gulf Coast states. Brendan Loy points out that the situation isn't going to improve once Gustav eventually makes landfall since this is the most active part of the hurricane season - September is traditionally the month when the Tropics are most active.

You'll also note that there's a bit of convergence on the expected storm track between the earlier model (top photo) and the new one (bottom). The new models still show the most likely course to hit somewhere in Louisiana. GFDL still shows an Alabama track, but that's an outlier at the moment.