Major Hurricane Gustav – update

A recent unofficial report of a wind gust to 140 mph on the Isle of Youth in the Cayman Islands. This storm has undergone rapid intensification since last night. The intensification rate has slowed some…simply because hurricanes can not get a whole lot stronger than this. Hurricanes are a lot like heat engines, that transfer the warmth from the ocean to the cold upper atmosphere, and there’s only a certain amount of energy that can be generated between an 85-88 degree ocean and a -70 or whatever upper atmosphere. However, it could become a category 5 by the time it gets into the Gulf tomorrow and away from Cuba. For a discussion on how hurricanes form posted on this blog earlier, click here.

We at UAH are still going to sample this hurricane…but our location near Lake Charles, LA is not looking so safe now…and was underwater during Hurricane Rita. Our portable radar and other instruments are not reliable in sustained winds above 90 mph, so we may be going to Alexandria, LA. We are leaving tomorrow morning, and I hope to have blog updates from down there, and maybe even a phone interview on the news, if we can work that out logistically.

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