Christine Hudnall

Let’s start with the latest info on T.S. Gustav - Just out…

5PM - 19.1N 74.4W - moving W-NW 3 - 50mph - 999mb/29.50in

2PM - 18.8N 74.4W - moving W 5 - 60mph - 997mb/29.44in

Now, my thinking may be a little off but according to my figuring and what I saw on satellite Gustav jumped due north. I started semi-tracking last night - and will pick up tonights information to continue, so it should be a busy time.

As of 5PM - forecast models (spaghetti models) have Gustav landing anywhere from south-west Florida toward Louisiana. This is a little different than earlier models which all basically agreed that he would be headed toward south-east Louisiana. We all need to keep an open mind because there is a lot of H2O to still go through.

Fay - bless her wet heart she is still taking a toll as she moves northeastward. The sad part with Fay is that here in the southeast we really needed the rain, but there is such a thing as too much too quickly. Here are some totals as of 2AM last night (yes, this post was originally started last night to be posted) with updates from 5PM in paranthesis following city/town:

Alabama:

• 15.27 - Clayhatchee
• 10.27 - Meadowbrook ( 10.50 )
• 08.87 - Calera ( 9.73 )

Florida:

• 26.65 - Melbourne/Windover Farms ( 27.65 )
• 22.83 - Cape Canaveral - USAF Field Mill
• 21.00 - Palm Bay
• 18.27 - Sanford

Georgia:

• 27.50 - Thomasville
• 11.67 - Valdosta
• 8.35 - Blufton

Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia all received below 8 inches and for the most part below 6 inches. Well, that was as of 2 AM.

The 5PM update shows a little differently:

North Carolina:

• 11.18 - Burnsville
• 10.84 - Harrisburg
• 08.84 - Charlotte
• 05.32 - Asheville
• 02.06 - Raleigh/Durham

South Carolina:

• 09.00 - Lake Wylie

Tennessee:

• 08.84 - Dunlap

What is the point of all this, well, if the ground becomes saturated too quickly, not allowing the water to flow through beyond and into the deeper part or aquifier, then it can and has been shown to soften the soil around things, namely trees. That includes BIG trees! When that happens they just fall over and unfortunately we are seeing this happening all around, so be careful out there.

And out in the tropics - they are keeping busy! I don’t know if anything will become of it, but have you seen the size of that tropical wave off the African coast? Geesh! Super-sized wave with, to my untrained and unofficial eyes, some nice rotation to it already. I also think that there are 2 areas in play just northeast of Gustav. NHC is showing only one though, and they have a lot more experience than I at this, so don’t hold my ramblings to be necessarily true. :)

Am testing out a new laptop, since my HP zd8000 decided it was going to become a really expensive paper weight. Am testing out a Dell - so far it seems okay, the one thing though that I am not liking already (and may be deciding factor for me) is that it gets hot. Very hot to the touch. Now, my mom has new laptop also (well, hers is almost 3 months old now) and hers doesn’t get hot, has a 17-in screen (mine is 15.4) and weighs slightly less. I have a week to decide, so am testing both to see will be the one.

Started this post the second time about 5:15PM, it is now 8:15PM - see what happens when you have storms and pressure all around, sinus pressure arises, you take medicine and the next thing you know, 3 hours go by! Yikes.

Update:

Gustav

8PM - 19.0N 75.0W - W 7 - 45mph - 999mb/29.50in.

That’s all for now folks - am fading fast…