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Hurricane Dean: 918 Millibars, But Not Category 5 (Yet)

By cmooney on August 20, 2007.

Here's the latest image of Dean, looking more menacing than ever:

i-5a9d8d6662fe326628902cbbdf0cd9d5-Dean Nearing Landfall.jpg

Yet despite this staggering satellite appearance, the NHC has not yet pronounced the storm a Category 5. However, the last aircraft report put the sea level pressure at 918 millibars--pretty darn low, and the lowest measured for Dean so far.

For comparison, 1995's Hurricane Opal had a minimum sea level pressure of 916 millibars--and this made Opal the strongest Atlantic hurricane not to be officially listed as a Cat 5.

So I'm still expecting this storm to be named a Category 5 soon enough, presumably at 11 ET. Then again, I could always be wrong. Stand by...

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This is very scary stuff - my relatives in Belize are way too close to this thing - hopefully it should miss them, which unfortunately means it will hit someone else.

Yeah, Belize is not in the crosshairs....

Pressure is now 915 mb. I am fully expecting this storm to be named a Cat 5 right before landfall which means the blow will be devastating indeed.

NHC just reported it as "POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC
CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE" on their 835PM report. 160 mph max sustained winds.

Looks like we got lucky with this one. The souther Yucatan is supposedly not very heavily populated. They have the storm continuing rapid westward motion, so it seems unlikely that the remants will stall out. That often cause very serious flooding. Mexico did evacuate 18000 offshore oil workers (Bay of Campeche sp?) where the storm will be a lot weaker due to having crossed land & colder water.

I've just spoken to my mother, who spoke to my uncle last night (UK time). Apparently the sky is black, with heavy rain. He lives away from the coast, so they at least should be safe. It seems that northern Belize will be hit (from the NOAA and NEMO updates), but since its a Cat 5, even being some distance from the storm centre means a bad time. At least it wont be Hattie in 1961, although I note that it was a Cat 4.

Hopefully, it should hit depopulated areas, but even so, this is a scary start to the season.