It has been a very busy day here at Live 5 News with the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon and all the action that has been going on in the weather office with Gustav, Hanna, Ike and a slew of other tropical waves. Thanks to the telethon, we had plenty of time to ingest and look over all the flood of data that was coming in. While Gustav was the big story today, we may be the epicenter of attention by the end of this week with Hanna as the threat is there that the upper Georgia and South Carolina coast is the target for what could be a significant hurricane. There is so much to look at still so I will give you a brief glance at the most important notes now and have a more extensive look at what Hanna means to us coming up first thing Tuesday morning.

HURRICANE HANNA:

The interesting thing with tropical systems is just when you think they are set to do one thing, they will surprise you and do something totally different. We did not expect Hanna to strengthen today due to the very strong wind shear aloft, but she did. The pressure dropped and when the hurricane hunters arrived they found a growing hurricane. Winds were up to 75mph and as of the 8pm advisory were up to 80mph. There continues to be a expansive area of very deep convection (storms) over the center and if this trend continues overnight, we could see Hanna grow a bit stronger. With the wind shear forecast to remain high through the next day or so, I don’t see her getting much bigger very quickly but we will not rule it out.

THE TRACK:

Everyone here has been calling about the track of Hanna by the end of the week. The most important thing to remember right now is that very small changes in the storms location NOW can mean bigger shifts down the road when it come to the forecast path LATER. There is no definitive way we can say exactly where Hanna will make landfall but we do have to note that areas from Florida to the east coast of North Carolina are under the gun. Everyone will look at the NHC official track and see that the center makes landfall between Savannah and Charleston on Friday Morning….NOTE…..This point will change so do not focus exactly on it. We will point out that all of the model forecasts are beginning to come into better agreement that this is the area of most concern. We will take all this into consideration and go with the NHC official plan for our forecast which will show tropical storm and hurricane conditions impacting the entire Live 5 viewing area Thursday - Saturday. The intensity forecast is a whole different challenge. Until the shear aloft weakens and Gustav’s winds aloft move westward, we can not reliably count on what the models are painting. We will go with the NHC guidance for now and post the potential for a Category 2 at landfall, but it has to be noted that both of our most trusted tropical models do bring Hanna to Category 3 strength or higher. While that is a possibility, we will not go that high just yet. We have to get some more reliable data from the hurricane hunters and NOAA jets into the models first.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

Stay with us tonight at 11pm, as Bill Walsh will have the latest updated info from the NHC on Hanna and her forecast. Go ahead now and plan and prepare for a possible strike from a Category 2 hurricane beginning late Thursday afternoon. Hopefully things will change…we will talk all the specifics tomorrow with more here on the blog. Get a good nights rest. Its going to be a long week. I am off to sleep for a bit. See you on the broadcasts Tuesday morning.

Chad Watson
Live 5 Meteorologist

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