[FireEater]

So far it looks like we might be spared. I'm located right above the word "EARLY" where the red dot is.

[Ninong]

Yes, if it keeps on this track, it looks like all of the U.S. will be spared, even Brownsville and Corpus Christi.

[weez1959]

A friend of mine is in Sugarland Texas, needless to say she's happy it's changing course.
I really feel for all the people in Jamaica who are about to be pummeled, so many of them don't have proper shelter

[Ninong]

On its present track, it will pass just to the south of Jamaica. Jamaica will be on the bad side of the eye but it looks like the eyewall will miss the island entirely. If it continues on this path, I don't think Jamaica will have winds above 100 mph but they will get a lot of rain.



"HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 60 MILES...95 KM...FROM
THE CENTER...AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 205
MILES...335 KM." (As of 11:00 a.m. ET Sunday) Advisory.

That means that 60 miles from the center of the eye, the winds are already down to 74 mph. It looks like Jamaica is not going to get a "direct hit" as sensationalized in the mainstream media headlines but they will suffer a lot of damage from rain and storm surge along the coast.

"COASTAL STORM SURGE FLOODING OF 7 TO 9 FEET ABOVE NORMAL TIDE
LEVELS...ALONG WITH LARGE AND DANGEROUS BATTERING WAVES...IS
POSSIBLE NEAR THE CENTER OF DEAN WITHIN THE HURRICANE WARNING AREA.

"STORM TOTAL RAINFALL AMOUNTS OF 5 TO 10 INCHES CAN BE EXPECTED OVER
JAMAICA...WITH MAXIMUM AMOUNTS OF UP TO 20 INCHES. AMOUNTS OF 4 TO
8 INCHES WITH MAXIMUM AMOUNTS OF 12 INCHES ARE EXPECTED OVER THE
CAYMAN ISLANDS. ADDITIONAL AMOUNTS OF 2 TO 4 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE
OVER SOUTHERN HISPANIOLA WITH MAXIMUM STORM TOTALS OF 10 INCHES.
EASTERN CUBA COULD RECEIVE 2 TO 4 INCHES OF RAIN...WITH MAXIMUM
AMOUNTS UP TO 7 INCHES. THESE RAINS COULD CAUSE LIFE-THREATENING
FLASH FLOODS AND MUDSLIDES."

[Ninong]

The 2:00 p.m. advisory, that just came out a few minutes ago, has it tracking slightly north of where it was predicted just three hours ago but still has the eye of the storm offshore to the south of Jamaica:

AT 200 PM EDT...1800Z...THE CENTER OF HURRICANE DEAN WAS LOCATED
NEAR LATITUDE 17.1 NORTH...LONGITUDE 76.0 WEST OR ABOUT 80 MILES...
125 KM...SOUTHEAST OF KINGSTON JAMAICA.

DEAN IS MOVING WEST-NORTHWEST NEAR 18 MPH...30 KM/HR. A MOTION
BETWEEN WEST AND WEST-NORTHWEST IS EXPECTED OVER THE NEXT 24 HOURS.
ON THE FORECAST TRACK...THE CENTER OF DEAN WILL BE PASSING VERY
NEAR THE SOUTH COAST OF JAMAICA OVER THE NEXT SIX TO TWELVE HOURS.

MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 145 MPH...230 KM/HR...WITH HIGHER
GUSTS. DEAN IS A CATEGORY FOUR HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON
SCALE. FLUCTUATIONS IN INTENSITY ARE COMMON IN MAJOR HURRICANES AND
ARE POSSIBLE DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS.

HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 60 MILES...95 KM...FROM
THE CENTER...AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 205
MILES...335 KM.

[Ninong]

Here is a real-time visible loop. It appears that all of the eye will pass just offshore south of Jamaica. (You have to give it time to fully load.)

[Ninong]

According to the official NOAA (National Hurricane Center) website (8 p.m. advisory):

"Hurricane Force Winds Extend Outward Up To 60 Miles...95 Km...from
The Center...and Tropical Storm Force Winds Extend Outward Up To 205
Miles...335 Km. An Observation Of Sustained Winds Of 80 Mph Was
Reported From Kingston Jamaica...and An Unofficial Observation Of
Sustained Winds Of 100 Mph Was Reported From Lionel Town Jamaica."

That's not at all what certain TV channels are claiming. The Weather Channel claimed 114 mph winds in Kingston (gusts to 138 mph). They also claimed that the eyewall brushed the island. The official NOAA Weather Bureau says the eyewall remained offshore -- the closest the center of the eye came to Kingston was 50 miles south.

This happens with every hurricane. The TV channels, including the Weather Channel, hype everything. Hurricanes are bad enough but they always play up the worst possible scenario to drive up their audience. All day long they have been predicting a "direct hit" on Jamaica and all day long the real weather bureau has been predicting a near miss south of the island.

P.S. -- You can see from the visible loop that the eyewall did not touch land at any point.

P.P.S. -- Sustained winds means the gauge stayed above that reading for a full minute or more.

AT 800 PM EDT...0000Z...THE CENTER OF HURRICANE DEAN WAS LOCATED
NEAR LATITUDE 17.5 NORTH...LONGITUDE 77.8 WEST OR ABOUT 70 MILES...
115 KM...WEST-SOUTHWEST OF KINGSTON JAMAICA AND ABOUT 265
MILES...425 KM...EAST-SOUTHEAST OF GRAND CAYMAN.

[FireEater]

I will have this in place by next season for sure. this exact one listed.

Guardian 10,000 Watt (LP) / 9,000 Watt (NG) Home Standby Generator - 5241 at The Home Depot

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by FireEater

I will have this in place by next season for sure. this exact one listed.

Guardian 10,000 Watt (LP) / 9,000 Watt (NG) Home Standby Generator - 5241 at The Home Depot

That looks VERY nice! Our 7,500 watt (gasoline-powered) Generac is noisy as hell!

One thing that happened here immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit was that all the major chains (Sears, Home Depot, Lowes) trucked in thousands of generators and priced them anywhere from 50% to 100% higher than the same models sold for the month before! It was obscene!

Sears had signs on every front door into the building telling you about their generators and they were stacked on pallets in the the ladies underwear section. OK, maybe not there but definitely in the aisles!

They did NOT order extra gas cans!!! You know, those red 5-gal gas cans that come wrapped in plastic in groups of six. Every store in the area (within 100 miles) was totally out of those within a couple hours after the storm passed and most of them didn't get any new stock for several days. Fortunately we had four or five cans but that wasn't nearly enough. You have to sit in line in your car for two hours or more to get gas at the gas stations and then some of them limit you to only 10 gallons. And many, many gas stations were closed. And most bank ATM terminals didn't work for a week or two after Katrina. It was a mess. The roads weren't even passable until about 36 hours after the storm passed and I had to drive 36 miles west to Baton Rouge to buy gas. None of the closer gas stations were open for at least four or five days and then they ran out of gas within a matter of hours. And the price of gas in Baton Rouge jumped from $2.69/gal to $3.29/gal within 36 hours. It rose even higher in some other parts of the country within a week after Katrina. In fact, it rose above $4.00/gal in San Francisco about a week after Katrina.

We had to haul gas from our house in Louisiana 85 miles to Gulfport for my nephew's wife's family because all of her relatives lost their homes and they needed gas to run generators. My nephew and his wife drove all the way from Ft. Lauderdale to Gulfport two days after the storm with an SUV loaded with supplies for her family because FEMA and the Red Cross were missing in action for the first four days! Actually the Red Cross was there before FEMA but they were rationing one MRE and one bottle of water per person per day for the first four days!!!

[FireEater]

What I like about this one is it also runs on LP or NG gas. I'll rest easier and so will the wife about the saltwater system. I'm in to deep not to have this type of insurance.

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by Ninong

According to the official NOAA (National Hurricane Center) website (8 p.m. advisory):

"Hurricane Force Winds Extend Outward Up To 60 Miles...95 Km...from
The Center...and Tropical Storm Force Winds Extend Outward Up To 205
Miles...335 Km. An Observation Of Sustained Winds Of 80 Mph Was
Reported From Kingston Jamaica...and An Unofficial Observation Of
Sustained Winds Of 100 Mph Was Reported From Lionel Town Jamaica."

That's the highest official winds reported by the NOAA (National Hurricane Center) for the Kingston, Jamaica area. Period!

The closest Hurricane Dean came to Kingston was 50 miles to the south. It's eye has varied from as wide as 25 nautical miles across to 15 nautical miles across. So even if you assume it had a 25 mile-wide eye at its nearest approach to Kingston, that would mean the inner eyewall would have been 37.5 miles to the south. At that time hurricane force winds (74 mph & up) extended outward a maximum of 60 miles from the center of the eye. It is highly unlikely that Kingston had sustained winds above 100 mph.

However, that's not how all the news media reported the story. I watched the local NBC affiliate's nightly news following the Giants-Ravens game and they reported it as "Hurricane Dean pounded Jamaica with winds up to 145 mph." Not once did they say that the winds over land never came close to that speed. Only at the very end of the segment, after exaggerating everything, did they mention a single sentence about the eye of the storm passing just south of the island. They also devoted a whole segment to the psychological effects this powerful almost Category 5 hurricane was having locally on residents still recovering from Katrina. The irony of that segment was amazing. They're bemoaning the harmful psychological effects on the locals and at the same time contributing to those effects.

"The storm hit Kingston, the Jamaican capital, with winds of up to 150mph, downing power lines, ripping off roofs and blocking roads with debris before spiralling off into the Caribbean in the early hours." -- Rupert Murdoch's Times of London was typical. It's a pity that Rupert owns the Times and now he will own the Wall Street Journal, too. Rumor has it that he will launch a hostile bid for the New York Times next.

P.S. -- Good news for Texas! The latest track has moved Dean further to the south.

P.P.S. -- Hurricane Dean reminds me of Howard Dean and his famous scream speech. How about you? I wonder if the person in charge of naming storms is a Republican?

I wonder what would happen if they decided to name a storm "Hillary" or "Mitt" or "Rudy" during an election year?

[schrocat]

Originally Posted by FireEater

What I like about this one is it also runs on LP or NG gas.