No Easy Road Out...

Being in broadcasting for 45+ years, you see a lot of situations that seem to repeat themselves.   Hurricane Harvey is not one of them.   The center of circulation has moved well off the coast south of Galveston and models continue to project him turning to the north making landfall just west of the TX/LA border sometime on Wednesday morning.  What is apparent on satellite loops tonight is the lack of any storms around the center which was clearly “exposed” on this PM’s visible loop.  Which reminds me of what happened with Hurricane Isidore back in 2002.  She was a strong Cat. 3 over the western Caribbean but moved over the Yucatan for a day.  She then came northward right for us over the warmest waters in the Gulf, but she never regained her intensity.  That appears to be the case with Harvey tonight.  Also, when Danny sat over Mobile bay for 3 days back in 1997, the heaviest rains rotated around from the “wet side” (eastern side) to the north and west sides.   The heaviest rains tonight are not on the east side of Harvey,( as a huge dry slot very apparent on the Water Vapor Loop), but have rotated to the north side.  The questions I have are these…1) will we see new bands of training storms develop east of Harvey overnight?  2) Will the upper dry slot hinder storm development on the east side and 3) Will the models (all showing heavy rains over us by daybreak) be correct?   The easy way out is go with the models and cancel everything for Tuesday.  My experience tells me when we do that, the bad weather isn’t so bad and people second guess the forecasters.  Cancelling schools is a no brainer.  I would wait until after daybreak before I start cancelling doctor’s appointments, hair dresser appt., trips to the store etc.   Use common sense.  Don’t venture out if we are under tropical downpours.  Today’s rains of 1-3” did cause some brief street flooding and I expect that to happen again on Tuesday.   As David pointed out tonight, Until Harvey  gets inland on Wednesday and moves farther north in latitude than us, we’ll have the potential for heavy, flooding rains.   They will NOT be as heavy as the Houston totals and the heaviest rains should again be closer to the center over east Texas and SW Louisiana.  Stay tuned!

 

There is some good news.  Long range models are developing a deep dip in the jet stream that should bring our first real Fall front by the end of next week.  Sweater weather? Nah, but just to have the lower humidity will be a real treat.