What headline Do You Want?

As many of you know, Hurricane Eta has made landfall on Nicaragua and will be moving slowly westward for the next several days.  The 4 PM NHC future track now includes south Florida as they expect Eta/Theta to reform over the Western Caribbean and then head back to the north.

The Weather Channel has jumped into the feeding trough and their headline is "Florida is now in the cone of Error".  That's true and those folks should have some concern.  However, if you watched David Bernard last night at 10 PM he show 2 terrific graphics that should make us here in Louisiana rest easy.

The top graphic showed that in the past 170 years, only 9 major hurricanes have developed in November with none crossing the Louisiana or Mississippi coasts.  The bottom graphic takes all November hurricanes and again NONE crossed the LA/MS. coasts.Sure some have gotten into the SE Gulf, but the increasing WSW upper winds steer these systems far to our east and I expect that to be the case with Eta/Theta.  In addition, NHC's discussion mentions this could morph into a hybrid sub-tropical system as there is lots of cooler & drier air covering the Gulf right now.   

Hurricane Eta remains a powerful Cat. 4 (140 mph) as it creeps into Nicaragua.   I'm sure this will be a major disruption to life for many weeks/months down there.

For us, lots of sunshine covers all of the Gulf coast with cold air clouds showing up well off our coast.  It'll be another chilly night with a gradual warming trend beginning Wednesday afternoon.

You can see how warmer air has returned back over the central plains where they are much warmer than us.  Very dry air (dew points in the 30s) makes it feel delightful out right now, but you'll need sweaters and jackets after dark.   If I see something new, I might update later tonight.  But right now I like David's "headlines" from last night.    Stay tuned!