Sally Turning More to the East Towards Pensacola?

Our local winds are still ripping tonight, but the real sign that Sally is leaving us is the rapid drop in the Mississippi River at the Carrollton gauge.  As Sally approached, the River rise was almost 4 feet reaching nearly 9' before falling 2 feet this evening.  That tells me the surge is leaving and aiming for areas far to our east.

That's confirmed on satellite and radar views as Hurricane Sally appears to be getting better organized and stronger.  Let's look at the radar views that show the definite pull to the east.

The top view is from 3 pm this afternoon when the western edge of the rain shield was touching the mouth of the River.  The bottom pic is from 9 PM showing a better defined center and the rain shield pulling 40 miles east of the River.  The satellite views tell the same story.

For the first time an eye is showing and it's already due south of where the NHC's previous track had landfall (Gulf Shores). That is confirmed on the bottom photo showing the eye some 20 miles east of the previous track.  I won't be surprised to see the new track shift landfall farther to the east with the center line over Pensacola or even farther to the east.     In addition, Sally could/might increase back up to Cat. 2 before landfall?  Recon is finding a rapid drop in pressure so they have got to increase her winds. That might be a stretch since some of her circulation is interacting with land.  It's in, here's the new 10 pm info from NHC (National Hurricane Center).

 

They have nudged their future center line track slightly to the east with the center line now over Pensacola. That required them to shift the Hurricane warnings farther east too.  It now goes to the Okaloosa/Walton County line that includes Ft. Walton & Destin.  Winds are 85 mph, but David just showed some off shore buoys gusting to 100+.  Forward motion is NNW at 2 mph, but what I'm seeing is faster movement on radar.   It's still going to take another 7-8 hours before Sally's center reaches the coast.  This new eastward shift means places to the west of the center line like Dauphin Island, Mobile Bay & Pt. Clear will miss the greatest storm surges.

The surface set up still has the large high drifting off the East Coast allowing Sally to finally make the move to the coast.  An upper trough moving out of the Rockies will help accelerate that motion tomorrow and Thursday.  As our winds veer more to the NW, water levels, especially in Lake Pontchartrain will come down as the winds subside locally.  The next 2-3 days look like we'll see sunshine return with no rain.

David & Zack Fradella mentioned the area down in the SW Gulf that could develop later this weekend.  I haven't had enough Chardonnay tonight to even talk about that.  I loved Zack showing the track of Sally.  And you wonder why the model forecasts were so wrong!  This has been one of those unpredictable storms, and it still might have some surprises for Florida.  I probably won't post until later tomorrow afternoon.  Just hope the folks to our east have been paying attention.  Stay tuned!