Hurricane Gustav

It looks like the Gulf states may be in for the biggest threat of this hurricane season with the rapidly intensifying Hurricane Gustav headed their way:

Gustav is now a hurricane (Cat 1) with winds of 85 mph (hurricane hunters are finding winds in excess of 100 mph right now as they fly through the storm). The track is now showing this will be a major hurricane (Cat 3 at least) by the weekend moving into the Gulf of Mexico. Most models have Gustav over the Northwest Caribbean or the SW Gulf of Mexico by Saturday/Sunday. The steering factor here will be a ridge of high pressure and how strong it is to keep Gustav on a westward track.

Later on this week, Gustav will be over extremely warm water and favorable conditions to strengthen, so rapid intensification is very possible. One of the models has this as a Cat 5 storm by the weekend. Certainly not out of the question.

Landfall won't occur until sometime next week, and on the current track it could become the third and strongest storm to hit Texas this season. This one has the potential to be a real mess.

UPDATE: It looks like the track may take it more north than west which could send a major hurricane into..wait for it...New Orleans, just in time for the GOP convention. One wise blogger wrote this in September of 2005:

...why should taxpayers be required to reset the pins of New Orleans just so the next big hurricane can knock them all down again?

Is Gustav the big wet bowling ball that's going to make that statement prescient? Another hurricane devastating New Orleans would not help the GOP cause this fall because it will bring back all the memories of a mishandled federal response. It will also, however, remind people of the folly of rebuilding a sinking city 16 feet below sea level.

Unfortunately, Ray "School Bus" Nagin is still mayor of that town, so we can probably count on more incompetence from him (better get some cots to the Superdome). The good news for Louisiana residents is they now have a governor in Bobby Jindal who knows what he's doing and won't be overwhelmed by circumstances like the previous governor was.

Stay tuned - this could be big.

UPDATE 2 - Oil prices soar on fears that Gustav could devastate Gulf oil production facilities:

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Hurricane Gustav hit the southern coast of vulnerable Haiti on Tuesday and could become the first major storm to threaten U.S. oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico since the devastating 2005 hurricane season.

Oil futures rallied sharply as traders watched Gustav's potential threat to U.S. energy infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico and were up around 1 percent by mid-afternoon.

Most computer models used to predict hurricane tracks showed Gustav headed toward Louisiana and Texas, areas where offshore rigs produce a quarter of U.S. crude oil and 15 percent of its natural gas and which were slammed by hurricanes Katrina and Rita three years ago.