Mean Dean Gets Meaner

It was a phrase I jokingly used on the air last week. "Mean Dean." At the time, Dean was merely a cluster of storms that had reached tropical storm status. We had already seen three of those this season with little major impact. Dean however is certainly different.

As of this blog entry, Hurricane Dean, a Category 4 with winds topping 150mph, has already devistated parts of the Caribbean Islands, completely wiping out precious banana crops in St. Lucia and Martinique.

The dangerous hurricane is being guided by a low pressure system that was over southern Florida. That low has now taken a westerly move and will be replaced by a ridge of high pressure over the east. This should keep Dean on a southerly route through the Yucatan, and into the southern Gulf of Mexico. Most of the models have the northern Gulf "in the clear." This spaghetti plot (below) that meteorologists look at as forecast guidance, takes all the various computer model runs and compares the forecast track. The one on the left shows most of the models are now coming together on a southern Gulf route to Dean, which takes him either into southern Texas or northern Mexico.

As a result of a possible Texas landfall. NASA has decided to bring the space shuttle home early for fear mission control in Houston could be disrupted. The photo on the right was taken from the shuttle. It shows Hurricane Dean with the Space station in the foreground.

With several thousand oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, even without a US landfall, we will likely feel the impact in a gas price increase. A simple trade-off for being spared so much devistation. We'll continue to monitor Dean. You can too in our Hurricane Center section. You can find it by returning to the main weather page and click on the hurricane center icon.

So long for now! --Brent