Gustavo Is A Stupid Name.

There. I said it. Gustavo is a stupid name.

For a hurricane. If you are a human named Gustavo then it is not such a stupid name - assuming you are bigger than me and could beat me up.

If not then Gustavo is STILL a stupid name.



So I will call this storm "Gus". Here is what Gus was up to at 2 PM Monday afternoon. Haiti and Cuba are in trouble here. Gus seems to want to hang out there. The very large unshaded part of the cone is for days 4 and 5. There is always a lot of error in the cone out 4 or 5 days. I am in the day 5 portion of the cone now.

Currently, Gus is not a hurricane. It is only a tropical storm. But all it needs is wind speeds of another 4 or 5 mph to be a hurricane. I think it will be one soon.

So what was Gus up to at 11 PM? This.


Notice how the track shifted to the south. There is a high pressure area over Florida right now, which they think will hold up and keep Gus to the south. Haiti and Cuba are still in trouble.

Florida is still in the extended cone, reflecting the lack of certainty in the track.



And at 2 AM the map was pretty much unchanged. It seems to be stalled, or the center of circulation shifted location. At any rate the center of circulation only moved 2 tenths of a nautical mile to the north (1,215.22 feet) and slightly less that distance to the west. If the speed of the overall storm is 12 knots to the NW then the only way to account for a change in position of this distance over three hours is if the center reorganized somewhere else.

A lot of the time this happens, it is an indication of the storm getting stronger.

I think that all indications are that this storm will stay to the south of Cuba, and will remain over open water - at least for the next few days. There is conflict in the models.

Anyhow, the wind speed prediction table is saying that there is a greater chance of the storm being a hurricane than a tropical storm in the next 12 - 24 hours.

So how about my guess? Given all this information what do I think?

Who cares. I am not a forecaster! If you are going to base your plans on what I predict the hurricane will do, you are crazier than I am.

Yet here is it. I think that there are tow realistic scenarios here. The first is that the eye will stay over the warm water south of Cuba, and the storm will get stronger. The other is that it will turn a little to the north, and make landfall over Cuba then stay there.

At this point I do not think this will become a South Florida event.