Time to Worry about Gustav

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[Tropical Storm Gustav coming off Haiti and reorganizing.]

It has been almost three full years since a major hurricane hit the United States. The last one was 2005's Wilma.

We aren't really used to this any more. 2004 and 2005 are slipping deeper and deeper into our memories...but they shouldn't.

Now, unfortunately, the current Tropical Storm Gustav may remind us of what it's like. The storm has got a whole lot of hot water ahead of it, and a track that looks pretty certain to bring it straight into the Gulf of Mexico. After that, who knows precisely where landfall will occur, but as Jeff Masters puts it: "Gustav will likely be a major Category 3 or 4 hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, and make landfall in the U.S. as a major hurricane."

Get ready.

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The current track places the storm dead on New Orleans. But this is many, many days in advance so you can't expect this to be accurate. But, this is worth keeping an eye on.
This is a rough sketch of the actual path of the eye of hurricane Katrina compared to the current projected path of the eye of hurricane Gustav.
.... Or so goes the last sentence in the current National Hurricane Center forecast discussion.
We knew Katrina was coming and now Hurricane Gustav looks set to get uncomfortably close to New Orleans.

And just as a reminder, a slow moving tropical storm like Fay can do a lot of damage without becoming a hurricane. The news reports show Gustav moving slowly across Haiti.