Where Will Sally Form?

Watching TWC, they believe Sally will be named shortly, however, looking at satellite views out in the Atlantic show some circulation starting with the cluster of clouds south of Paulette & Rene.

You can even see some banding trying to form.  Regardless, this will either be Sally or Teddy shortly.  I'd say the betting man would win with TD 19 becoming Sally first.

A Recon aircraft has arrived on site so I expect NHC may even upgrade to Sally by 1 PM.  All models continue to indicate this system will be a SE LA/MS event with some intensity forecasts now going to Cat. 2.

Since NHC is married to the models, I expect them to issue a Hurricane Watch from Morgan City to Mobile Bay on their 4 PM advisory.  They now make soon to be Sally a Hurricane just east of the mouth of the River by late Monday afternoon.   Before you go into total panic, there remains tremendous UNCERTAINTY as to both track and intensity,  They have made a shift to the east on their center line track, but not until after landfall.

The top graphic is the forecast track from 4 AM while the bottom is from 10 AM.  Note landfall location is almost the same, however this morning the track was right over McComb and now they bend it to the right (east).   This is important as the sooner it curves the better for SE LA.

More models turn it east of us with only one going to our west.   What should catch our attention is the intensity forecasts increasing from earlier runs.   IF soon to be Sally rapidly intensified to a CAT. 2 on that projected center line track, all of SE LA/MS/AL would see major impacts from storm surge (8-10'+), rainfall (10-15"+) and winds ( 70-90 + mph).   So what should you do today?   The usual stocking up on basic supplies comes first.  I am not going to close my hurricane shutters until I know for sure where the storm is going.  IF it turns to our east, we'll be on the weak side of the storm.  There will be a huge difference in both winds and rains.  Boat owners should plan on moving their property on Sunday as the weather still should be ok.  Homeowners should plan on moving all potted plants & yard furniture to a safe location so they don't become flying debris, but let's give that another look tomorrow.

Both those bulls eyes above are 15-20" of rain.  Any shift of the center line track to the west brings that heavy rain over NOLA.   Let's see what the Recon plane finds before we begin to get nervous.

Our local rainfall is confined to south of the Lake and is part of a circulation that can be seen well down over the central Gulf.  That is expected to drift farther away from us later today and tonight.

Just to our north it's sunny but we're all in the very soupy, tropical air mass with dew points well into the 70s.    Cloud cover and showers will keep us less hot for the next 3-5 days.  I'll try to post again after the next update at 4 PM.  Stay tuned!