Category: Miscellaneous babble

With most of the rain from Ernesto moving away toward a projected landfall just west of Wilmington, NC, it’s time to wait for the flooded streets to drain before life gets back to normal. Lots of rain, flooding in all the usual places and some power outages, but so far I haven’t heard of much in the way of damage.
Before people start celebrating though, there might be more rain on the way later tonight associated with a front currently moving through Georgia.
Also from NHC‘s Tropical Weather Outlook, this might be the next system to keep an eye on.

A TROPICAL WAVE LOCATED ABOUT 700 MILES WEST-SOUTHWEST OF THE CAPE VERDE ISLANDS HAS BECOME A LITTLE BETTER ORGANIZED THIS AFTERNOON. ADDITIONAL SLOW DEVELOPMENT IS POSSIBLE OVER THE NEXT DAY OR TWO AS THE SYSTEM MOVES SLOWLY WESTWARD.

From Bureau 42 comes news of a new straight-to-DVD series of B5 episodes featuring some of the original cast. Should be interesting to see the kinds of stories JMS comes up with.
And for the truly die-hard B5 fans, the complete set of B5 scripts written by JMS is being compiled and released in a 14 volume set (volumes 1-8 are available now). Not sure how news of this got by me, but it sure would look cool on the bookshelf..

The latest 5pm forecast for Ernesto has moved it back to the west and puts it just off the coast of Charleston by around 2ish tomorrow afternoon.
It’s a tropical depression now, so any strengthening it does over water once it leaves Florida will probably only bring it back to tropical storm status. This is good. It will still be windy and rainy tomorrow though. If the Melbourne, FL radar is any indication, very rainy.
I will have to remember to bring along an extra pair of socks, shoes and pants tomorrow, just in case I have to swim to get to work.

The latest 5 AM forecast track for Ernesto carries it a little further east making another landfall over the Myrtle Beach area instead of on top of Charleston. That’s good (at least a little better than before).
Looking at the NWS radar for Miami, most of the rain is on the left side of Ernesto, which is the side Charleston would be on. Ernesto ends up staying over warm water a little longer too on the current track, giving it time to strengthen. That’s not so good.
From today’s 5AM discussion:

AFTER ERNESTO EMERGES BACK OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN IN ABOUT 18 HOURS OR SO…IT WILL BE MOVING NORTH-NORTHEASTWARD RIGHT OVER THE GULFSTREAM AND BENEATH A FAVORABLE UPPER-LEVEL OUTFLOW REGIME. FRICTIONAL EFFECTS CAUSED BY THE FLORIDA PENINSULA WILL LIKELY TIGHTEN UP AND IMPROVE THE OVERALL LOW-LEVEL CIRCULATION OF ERNESTO TODAY…WHICH WILL ENHANCE THE OPPORTUNITY FOR ERNESTO TO RE-STRENGTHEN ONCE IT IS BACK OVER WATER. IT IS ENTIRELY POSSIBLE THAT ERNESTO COULD BE NEAR HURRICANE STRENGTH JUST BEFORE IT MAKES LANDFALL AGAIN…

Wow, the clever guys over at Butterfat have created this totally cool weather aggregator that harvests info from different places and collects it together. Check it out. There are some great maps and imagery there.
Thanks to Matthew for the link.