Last night Gustav almost became non-existent after being ripped apart by Haiti… Well, this morning, Gustav is well on its way to becoming a major hurricane as the center has reformed and thunderstorms are exploding around it.  As of the 11:00 am advisory Gustav is nearing hurricane strength.  Wind speeds are still at 70 mph, but the pressure has fallen another 5 millbars since the last advisory.  The center is located about 80 miles to the east of Kingston, Jamaica, and is expected to skirt the coast of Jamaica today.  Based off of satellite trends, sea surface temperatures, and upper level winds, Gustav will become a hurricane today and could rapidly intensify into a major hurricane Friday as the center moves away from Jamaica.  Gustav will pass over the warmest waters in the entire Atlantic basin over the next 48 hours with a very favorable upper air pattern for intensification.  The official National Hurricane Center forecast brings Gustav to Cat 3 status, but I think this storm has a good shot at going for Cat 4. 

The forecast track remains relatively unchanged.  I expect a general westward motion to continue for the next 24-36 hours with a gradual turn to the northwest over the weekend.  Gustav should remain on this track until landfall sometime Tuesday.  The storm will be steered around an area of high pressure which allows for a pretty easy forecast unlike Fay which had next to no steering trend.  Right now, it looks like Louisiana is still in the middle of the target zone, but landfall is possible anywhere from Galveston to Mobile.

Lets move on to Hanna, which is probably going to turn into a big headache.  The storm is a tropical storm now with sustained winds around 40 mph.  The storm is moving to the west-northwest at about 12 mph.  This motion will continue for a few days as Hanna slowly strengthens.  After Saturday the path of Hanna becomes a little more uncertain.  A few computer models are taking the storm north and east, allowing it to be picked by an upper low pressure system next week.  Another group of models, allows the storm to be left behind with a slow westward drift.  If the latter works out, we will be looking at a hurricane very near the Bahamas early next week.  Which is just going to be a boatload of fun!  (insert sarcasm here :D ) As this storm develops, and the hurricane hunters are able to get in there, the models will get better and we should have a pretty good idea of where Hanna will be going in a couple of days.

So what do the next two weeks hold?  Well, it looks like the pattern we are in right now, will stick around through the middle of the month.  It is very possible we are just beginning what could be a very, very active tropical period ahead.  I think by the first part of the week, we may be tracking at least three named storms as two other areas of interest are now emerging as well.

Stay tuned!