I share your concern; we are watching that Low in the Gulf closely here in Central Texas, as well.
Erin, as predicted by the models three days ago, was supposed to have moved westward quickly with minimal impact on most of Texas. Instead, it has meandered around Texas and then moved northeastward, with greater impact than previously modeled...
Streams of moisture are still flowing into Texas from the Gulf, and the same forces that formed and moved Erin - and this new unpredicted low - are in play as Dean approaches. These forces are not being accurately predicted in the same models that are forecasting Dean’s path.
My biggest concern regards how totally UNRELIABLE these models have been for us in Texas this entire year. With such a consistantly bad track record, I’m not at all comfortable with these models will finally “get it right” this time for Texas regarding Dean. I’m not saying Dean’s forecast path *can’t* happen - I’m simply pointing out that some unidentified weather forces are causing chaos in the models this year, and there is a strong possibility that unmodeled forces may cause Dean’s track to be far more unpredictable than these same models are forecasting.
There is a lot of discussion on the ULL on wunderground as well. You can see it is pulling moisture down out of Erin and tightening up in the looped visual data. It also has slowed down its approach to the Texas coast.
Roger that. I’m just west of Austin at L. Travis in the Hill Country.
Oh, that reminded me of something Doc Frank said tonight that I wanted to pass on.
He said the “cone of uncertainty” represents a 65% chance of being right on the money - but we should keep in mind that there is also a 35% chance of a storm going outside of those imaginary boundaries, too.
He was making that point in reference to the lower TX Gulf Coast and what to do about Dean in the next few days.