Tuesday Afternoon Update
Gustav makes landfall in southeast Haiti
Recent satellite imagery shows that the eye on Gustav in now on the coast of southeast Haiti near the town of Jacmel. It has continued northwest, but a west or west-northwest motion should start soon. A temporary weakening should start soon as it is over land. Once Gustav emerges back over open water in the Caribbean Sea south of the Windward passage, strengthening should resume.
The I.R. satellite picture shows an explosion of deep convection on the northeast side of the circulation. It looks like the strong southeasterly flow from the Caribbean is being forced orographically up the mountain slopes of Haiti. This is resulting in very heavy rain with no doubt flash flooding.
Outflow aloft remains excellent on the east and south sides of Gustav. The upper trough still is restricting outflow on the north and west sides. As Gustav slides westward, it will encounter a more favorable upper wind pattern for development.
At this time a recon is investigating Gustav. Very few reports are coming in. Usually a vortex message is released to the public just before the official NHC advisory comes out. Gustav is also in a zone of few buoy's, no radar and few surface observations. At this point we are counting on the Hurricane Hunters and satellite.
The forecast models are still moving around. NHC appropriately said in an earlier statement that large errors are possible on days four and five of their forecast. We believe that the models are probably good to the northwest Caribbean. They take Gustav south of Cuba, similar to Fay. The track is clustered around the western tip of Cuba where most take the turn north into the Gulf of Mexico. The mid level high in the eastern Gulf and over Florida is forecast to weaken just enough in the critical time window of Thursday and Friday to pull Gustav into the Gulf. A mid latitude trough is forecast to drop toward the Southeast - that is why the high weakens. If the trough is just a bit weaker, then the high may be strong enough to steer Gustav farther west, like into the Yucatan or western Gulf. To sum up, it is too early to make the call on the recurvature toward the northern Gulf. After a few more model runs we should have a better idea soon concerning the chance of Gustav recurving into the Gulf.
