Tropical Storm Isaac’s “Spaghetti Models”

All eyes are on Tropical Storm Isaac… As of Tuesday, the storm is still dealing with dry Saharan air wrapping into it, limiting development, but as the storm churns west it will enter much more favorable conditions. This means as the storm enters the Eastern Caribbean there is a good chance that it will be a hurricane.

So where will it go? Let’s start with what we do know, which is that storm will impact the Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean Wednesday-Friday. From Friday-Saturday the storm will past just south of the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico… After that is where the question marks come in and is the reason I posted the picture of the spaghetti models. Just looking at those models it would be safe to assume that the storm will make a northward turn over Eastern Cuba and impact the SE coast of the U.S. But that isn’t what we should assume! So far, all the model runs of this system have placed it too far north initially, while the storm continues to have a southerly component to it’s westerly direction. Also we need to keep in mind so far this year steering patterns have directed storms towards the Yucatan of Mexico. So we have to be aware that the storm could go south of these tracks in the long term and we are certainly not out of the picture in the Northern Gulf.

At this point there is no reason for us to be alarmed here, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start thinking what you would do in the event of a storm. It’s always better to be prepared! Of course we’ll keep you posted on all the latest as the storm moves west.