Tropical Storm Rita is not quite a hurricane yet. The National Weather Service isn’t quite sure yet which direction it might travel once it becomes a hurricane. Well, welcome to life on the Gulf Coast.
The National Hurricane Center’s “Five-day Cone” pictured here guestimates a landfall that is a bit north of what it was earlier today. Here is what the weather people said in their 8 p.m. discussion:
“THE NOGAPS AND GFDN FORECAST A STRAIGHT WESTWARD TRACK INTO SOUTHERN TEXAS…WHILE THE GFS AND GFDL FORECAST A NORTHWARD BEND TOWARD THE TEXAS/LOUISIANA BORDER REGION. GIVEN THIS UNCERTAINTY…IT MUST AGAIN BE EMPHASIZED THAT FORECAST ERRORS CAN BE QUITE LARGE AT THESE LONGER LEAD TIMES.”
Just what NOGAPS and GFDNs and GFSes and GFDLs are I haven’t a clue nor do I think it is particularly germane unless you are some kind of science/weather/meteorology freak and if so, I can’t quite figure why the hell you’d want to waste your time reading my lame ass blog. What is important is the last sentence. It says: “We don’t really know. We’ll get back to you.” That’s okay though. We’re not dealing with a left-handed batter who bats .345 against a left-handed pitcher with an ERA of 0.1 who always wins at home and when the humidity is below 70 percent. We’re dealing with nature and these people at the hurricane center really have gotten pretty good at predicting this stuff, regardless of what kind of garbage you have been reading lately.
I think the only person you may have heard faulting the National Weather Service during Katrina is U.S. Sen. “Righteous Rick” Santorum, R-Pa., who would run over his mother to privatize the weather service because private weather firm AccuWeather has its headquarters in Pennsylvania.
Of course, I am keeping an eye on the storm. Even if it were to hit where the five-day cone projects we could still see some rough stuff here near the Texas-Louisiana border. It could go south of there, it could go north, or it could just stop right where it is and go in an entirely different direction entirely.
Locally, the TV stations are talking about preparations for the storm. Local officials will probably be making a decision by Wednesday whether we need to evacuate. If, and a big if, that takes place then I will have a range of options dependent on how bad the storm is and whether some publication will pay me to write about the storm.
Until then I guess I’ll just twist in the wind.