Originally posted by SpittinCobra
Here is how I think its going to play out, she will be a 3, if she stays on the most southern path the stronger she will be. Each path north of the the most southern projected, weaker and weaker north.
A lot of the colder water from deeper in the gulf was churned by katrina close to NO and east of that. If Rita stays low she might be as big as katrina.
If there are more storms this season, no bigger than a 3. As if a 3 is little.
No offence, that is factually incorrect, for two reasons. One the upwelling you are referring to is gone. There has been plenty of time now, since Kat, for the open water temps to return to normal. Also there has been quite a few days over the Gulf with high temps and little cloud cover. A quick glance a buoy data shows that temps in the Gulf are high across the board.
NDBC Station 42001 is reporting a sea temp of +84 F
Station 42001 - MID GULF
Because of the relatively large shallow costal shelf in the central Texas Gulf shore, the temps are higher than in the deeper Gulf.
NDBC: Local Data
If you remember, during the days before Kat’s land fall, we saw a rarely seen phenomenon. Once a hurricane crests over high cat. 4 status, the storms replace eyes on a quite different method. Rapid Eye Wall Replacement(REWR) is a real threat. Instead of a collapse in the eye wall, we see more of a pulsing. Time to replacement is measure in hundreds of minutes not in 8-12 hours. It is almost as if there is a frequency to it. Due to the nature of REWR the storm loses less power, during eye replacement, than a smaller storm would. NO was lucky that Kat hit right in the middle of a REWR. Thus the storm dropped from 4 to 5.
I think this point was raised last time but from the research I have seen, it seems that once a storm hits high cat. 4-5 level, the storm behaves more like a tornado than a normal hurricane. IIRC tornado centers pulse as well.
On a side note that anticipated lifting of the high, centered of SW Texas, has not yet occurred. As long as that stays in place the storms track will continue on a more true westerly track. I know they have been anticipating the High to slide Eats, but I am not seeing that yet. To be fair I am not a meteorologist and I do not know what the interaction of two strong disparate pressure systems will result in.
[img] www.goes.noaa.gov...[/img]
East CONUS Water Vapor Loop
It is possible that if that high can sit there for a few more days Houston and surrounding areas may just dodge this “bullet”, yet!
, here we go again!!! Haven't I heard that somewhere before? 
