Louisiana gears up for Gustav as it makes landfall in Haiti

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

Very warm sea surface temperatures and favorable upper-level winds are fueling Gustav's growth, Roberts said.

Gustav is forecast to turn more towards the west northwest and west over the next few days, and should be in the south central Gulf by Sunday morning.

Several computer models show the storm tracking northwestward across the Gulf towards the mouth of the Mississippi River after that, and strengthening to a Category 4 hurricane.

But there are some signs that there will be weak steering currents greeting Gustav when it enters the Gulf, he said. At the moment, the storm is being steered by a southwestern extension of a subtropical high pressure system sitting over the Bahamas and Florida, while a lower pressure "weakness" extending from the Mississippi valley into the central Gulf seems to be drawing the storm forward.

"In terms of the dynamical models, the spread is rather large," Roberts said. "We have models showing motions into the Bay of Campeche to the west, all the way into the northeastern and eastern Gulf.

More here.

This is fucking nerve wracking.

Gustav probably won't hit the Big Easy, but since Katrina, and for me since I moved here a little over a year ago, people in New Orleans get a bit uneasy this time of year when the Atlantic Ocean rolls tropical depressions into the Gulf of Mexico like bowling balls. On the one hand, this is all part of the city's charm: I drank beers after work with locals earlier tonight, all of us fully aware that death and destruction may be bearing down on our city this weekend. Kind of like partying at the gates of Mordor. Indeed, the Crescent City's above ground cemeteries, full of white tombs and monuments to the departed, along with the overall sense of sweet and ancient decay here, and the death imagery associated with the voodoo iconography conspicuous here and there around town, do nothing but reinforce the feeling. We live in the most fragile of American cities, and we all know it. We all celebrate it.

On the other hand, it sucks to know that come Saturday I might be parked in a massive traffic jam on I-10 West toward Houston. Like I said, this is nerve wracking.

Katrina. Gustav. What the fuck is it with all these fucking Russian hurricanes?

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