Blogtrek

Isabel looks like Gloria: Report 5

Here are the past few runs' results:

September 12
0Z - Delmarva Peninsula
6Z - Skirting Delmarva, enter at New Jersey
12Z - Delmarva Peninsula, then towards Buffalo, NY
18Z - Delmarva, VA, then towards Buffalo, NY
September 13
0Z - New England
6Z - New Jersey and Long Island

Yesterday the runs were all alike, and they corresponded with other runs too. They imply a landfall somewhere in Eastern Virginia, which had me concerned. Isabel was going to come in at an unusual angle, headed northwest. Then this morning's runs come in saying that it is going to miss Virginia altogether and head to New England, and at 6Z, it came a little closer, heading to Long Island. The other models don't seem to go out far enough, and they are hard to find on the Internet. But I did find GEM, which is a Canadian model, and that one looked really interesting. Isabel would head to Norfolk, skim by Norfolk and Baltimore about 150 miles off shore, then make like it was going out to sea. Then it makes a subtle turn to the Northwest and scores a bulls-eye on New York City, on downtown Manhattan. Considering what happened two years ago, I think New York will be well prepared for this storm if that happens.

But where will it actually go? There is still some variance in the models. I looked at past history and found that Isabel is different from Fran, different from Hugo, different from Floyd. Hugo really concerned me. It hit Charlotte, NC with 85 mph winds, causing power outages to 95% of the city and covering some streets with downed trees, and this is as far inland as Richmond is.

I got a clue this morning from the track. It looks a lot like Gloria in 1985. The path is similar, going north of the Caribbean islands and then heading for the Outer Banks. Like Isabel, Gloria had high winds, up to 150 mph, and a really low pressure besides. As Gloria approached, the winds died down, as Isabel appears to be doing now. Further there was a weak tropical storm named Henri (this was 18 years ago and hurricanes repeat names every 6 years, and 6 divides 18 evenly) just like now that went up the coast before the big storm arrives. Like now, there was a front going across the mid part of the nation, from Wisconsin to eastern Texas.

So to determine where Isabel is going, look at how it differs from Gloria. Gloria's Henri, for instance, developed out of nowhere off South Carolina and then went up the coast in a straight line. 2003's Henri developed in the Gulf of Mexico instead, crossed Florida and petered apart a while in the Atlantic before moving west to hit the coast, then move northward. This does not tell much about where Isabel is going, but we need to look at differences between the storms to give us a clue.