Hurricane Isabel Now Expected To Hit The United States

National Hurricane Center ^ | 9/14/03 | NHC

[I_love_weather]

Sorry for the caps...this is the way they post these things

THE MODELS ARE NOW IN EXCELLENT AGREEMENT WITH ISABEL MAKING LANDFALL ALONG THE CENTRAL U.S. EAST COAST IN ABOUT 4 DAYS. THERE IS STILL UNCERTAINTY ON WHERE THE EXACT LANDFALL COULD OCCUR SINCE THE DEVELOPING CENTRAL U.S. TROUGH COULD DEEPEN AND DIG SOUTHWARD MORE THAN IS FORECAST BY THE GLOBAL MODELS...WHICH COULD LEAD A MORE NORTHWARD MOTION AND LANDFALL FARTHER UP THE EAST COAST THAN WHAT IS CURRENTLY FORECAST. UNFORTUNATELY...ALL OF THE MODEL GUIDANCE AGREE ON A LARGE AND STRONG NORTH-SOUTH ORIENTED RIDGE REMAINING EAST OF ISABEL...WHICH SHOULD PREVENT THE POWERFUL HURRICANE FROM RECURVING OUT TO SEA. LANDFALL ALONG THE U.S MID-ATLANTIC COAST SOMEWHERE BETWEEN NORTH CAROLINA AND NEW JERSEY BETWEEN 4 OR 5 DAYS IS APPEARING MORE AND MORE LIKELY.

ONLY MINOR FLUCTUATIONS IN INTENSITY ARE EXPECTED FOR THE NEXT 3 DAYS AS ISABEL IS FORECAST TO MOVE OVER SIGHTLY WARMER WATER AND REMAIN IN A FAVORABLE DOUBLE-OUTFLOW PATTERN. HOWEVER...BY 96 HOURS...ISABEL IS EXPECTED TO BE ACCELERATING NORTH-NORTHWESTWARD UNDER INCREASING SOUTHERLY UPPER-LEVEL FLOW. HOWEVER...ALL OF THE MODELS ARE IN GOOD AGREEMENT ON THE CENTRAL CORE OF ISABEL REMAINING EAST OF THE STRONG JETSTREAM AND UNDER 20-25 KT 200 MB WIND. THIS WOULD TEND TO KEEP ISABEL STRONGER THAN WHAT THE SHIPS INTENSITY MODEL IS INDICATING...ESPECIALLY SINCE ISABEL WILL BE MOVING OVER THE WARM GULFSTREAM SOUTH OF THE NORTH CAROLINA OUTER BANKS AT THAT TIME. THEREFORE...LITTLE OR NO SIGNIFICANT WEAKENING IS EXPECTED TO OCCUR UNTIL AFTER LANDFALL OCCURS.

FORECASTER STEWART

Five Day Forecast Map

http://maps.wunderground.com/data/images/at200313_5day.gif

[U S Army EOD]

One woman was in a condo on the beach who decided to have a hurricane party. She was the only survior of the people there. She had no life jacket and I think she grabed a mattress or something. She was found several miles inland and when she went across Bay St. Louis she said she could not see the tops of the pine trees.

Actually, if you have good anchors, one of the best places to be is in a boat. I have rode out three of them like that. They were not as bad as Camille except for one in the open ocean in the Bay of Biscay in a 36 foot sailboat. I was scared to death.

[AnAmericanMother]

Chita is a terrible story.

I love Lafcadio Hearn's work. He is a bit flowery for modern taste, but he had the root of the matter in him.

Did you know that he wound up in Japan, married a lady of samurai family, and changed his name to Koizumi Yakumo?

[kassie]

Thanks for pinging me. I need all the help I can get. My
m-i-l gave me very good advice, make sure nothing is left in the refrigerator. In case the power is out for several days.

[dixie sass]

Amen brother, amen. Po' end my heiny! There are some gorgeous places up there!

[CobaltBlue]

The people in New Orleans and the surrounding areas never said: "I wonder what the weather will be like." Instead, they asked: "What does Nash say?"

It doesn't take a genius to be able to predict the weather in Louisiana most of the time - it's gonna be hot, humid, and probably gonna rain.

Nash Roberts' genius lay in predicting storms, especially hurricanes, which are especially important to the offshore oil business, because they have to bring in the crews if there is a hurricane coming. He said it was 75% science and 25% art.

[Amelia]

Damn Yankees.

Yeah. I like Moose4's tagline. :-D

[U S Army EOD]

Peaches was an amazing cat. She acted more like you would expect a dog to act. She used to ride around in an open jeep with me. Just whisle for her and here she came. I had her for fourteen years and lost her to cancer. She had gone down hill so far I took her to the vet to end her suffering. I held her as they gave her the shot and she just simply put her head in my hand and died. They say when you die you may have long lost relatives meet you. If I had my choice Peaches would be the first one I would want to see. She has been gone for eight years now and I still miss her.

[CobaltBlue]

Yes, I have a lot of Lafcadio Hearn's books, including some that were written in Japan. Did you know he was legally blind? He let his imagination fill in what he could not see, and his imagination "saw" beautiful things, which always impressed me. I don't think he ever met an ugly woman, to him they were all beautiful.

[abner]

Latest computer model? I think this one is new...

[dixie sass]

Power won't be out for a few days, it will be out for weeks, maybe evea month or more.

[fatima]

Thanks oceanview,I am going to show my husband,guess we better get down there and get everything in and then run up here in Bucks County PA and get everything in.

[dixie sass]

I know what you mean. I miss my TinkerBell badly. She rode out Hugo with me and everything else. The morning that Momma dies the other cats hid. TinkerBell gave Momma a good bye kiss. I'll never forget that. She mourned Momma as much as I did.

[Lucy Lake]

Pinging you to 351.

[NautiNurse]

Oooh la la! Those hip boots are tres chic!

[djf]

People and animals can have a strange bond. My work takes me away for varying periods of time, and my next door neighbor insists my hound (who lives in my fenced in back yard) knows the very day I am returning, and starts staring at the house and the back door.

[RipSawyer]

"Does anyone in the Southeast remember Hurricane Hugo."

Steve, I live 70 miles inland in SC and I sat up most of the night, during the worst of it I kept hearing huge trees crashing, one relatively small tree broke about ten 10 feet off the ground and the top fell on my house roof but didn't do any real damage. My first wife is now deceased but she slept through the whole thing somehow, she was raised in Oklahoma and had no concept of what a hurricane meant. The next morning she went outside and looked around and nearly went into shock. I had tried to prepare her but it all meant nothing until she actually saw it, one yellow Poplar tree 30 inches at the base and over 100 feet tall had blown down and fallen away from the house, if it had fallen the other way it would have crushed most of the house. There were incredible numbers of other trees on the ground and many broken off halfway up, large limbs everywhere. I am very thankful that I was not in the Mclellanville area, some folks there spent most of the night floating in the water and actually holding onto the rafters in some building where they had taken shelter.

[oceanview]

what is with that BAMM model? that's the latest one to run, but it always seems divergent. it relies on a stall, and then a movement of the trough to pick it up and kick it northeast. thats got to be a low probability event, hence the divergence.

[oceanview]

we cut down all of the trees on our property years ago. i hate trees.

[U S Army EOD]

WELL YOU DO NOTICE THEM DON'T you.

[AnAmericanMother]

Yes, photographer Clarence John Laughlin, another New Orleans original, used Hearn's essay "The Woman We Will Never Know" as part of a book of photographs that I picked up somewhere along the line. That was my introduction to Hearn. I got from there into his New Orleans stories, then his Japanese ones.

BTW, I was lucky enough to meet Laughlin before he died and got him to autograph my old copy as well as an old copy of "Ghosts Along the Mississippi" and an essay he had written for American Heritage magazine back in the 50s. (I thought the book store owner was going to kill me - but Laughlin was pleased. And I would have done a LOT worse than that to get his autograph!)

Hearn's Japanese ghost stories are guaranteed crowd pleasers - I have told them to a skeptical audience (fifth grade boys) with resounding success (I dress up in my black five-crest kimono and sandals on Hallowe'en to tell them - this was a regular feature of my daughter's elementary school years). When I told "The Boy Who Drew Cats" and "Hoi-Ichi the Earless" I could actually see the boys' eyes getting wider and wider. (The girls, I am sad to say, were hiding their heads and shrieking). Something about a "goblin rat - as big as a cow - lying in a pool of blood in the middle of the temple floor" . . . And there's another one about goblins whose heads came off, and they ran around sucking people's blood -- until they met up with a fearless samurai who had become a wandering monk!

. . . I love that stuff.