Gustav headed to New Orleans?

Here you go SB.
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/ushurrlist.htm

The "Saffir-Simpson Category" is what we're refering to when we say a "cat 3" etc.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshs.shtml

Thanks Joebert.

Just read a story on the BBC site quoting the Mayor regarding mandatory evacutation of New Orleans. Sounds as if this is much stronger than Katrina was... Apparently nobody has ever seen a storm like this before. Wow.

Expected to reach Catagory 5 over the golf of Mexico.

It's starting to move faster which is good. Slow moving hurricanes are the worst because they last longer.

It's between a cat 4 and cat 5 now and it's just getting over the west tip of Cuba and into the Gulf of Mexico.

I've seen talk on the news that if there was such a thing as a category 6 hurricane, this would probably reach that.
The creator of the scale used says the reason it stops at 5 is because once you get past that it's pretty much total devistation.

So a cat 6 would pretty much just be a cat 5 that lasted a lot longer.

Any idea what is the cause for the route the hurricane takes or why it seems to get stronger and in the case faster across the gulf of Mexico? I was just looking at the Katrina route and this Gustav hurricane seems to be taking a similar route so far.

It's because of the warm water in the Gulf of Mexico. I think they call it the gulf stream loop, or something.

In a nut shell. warm water to a hurricane is like gasoline to a fire.

The Gulf is like a giant puddle of gasoline, whereas Cuba and the tropics are like a rope that has been sprayed with gasoline, a wick of sorts.

Once a hurricane makes it to the Gulf of Mexico, it's at the mercy coldfronts coming down from the northern United States. Hurricanes don't like cold air. Cold air to hurricanes is like water to a gas fire.

Now if you know anything about gasoline fires, you know that if you try to put it out with water it has to be an overwhelmingly large amount of water or else it's just going to spread the fire around and make it worse.
It's the same thing with cold fronts and hurricanes, it's what happened with Katrina, the cold front that ran into it wasn't large/cold enough to kill the storm & it just ended up spreading the storm around.

About now is the time we usually don't watch the storm itself as much as we're watching the fronts from the north.

We already know we're screwed, it's just a matter of how screwed and exactly which ones of us are screwed.

I see. Very well explained Joe.

And there is a cold front coming down from the north which is also going to cause a lot of rain and flooding in the midwest of the US in addition to the damage the storm does on the coast

So, ideally what you need is for the whole of the US be replaced with Scotlands weather system to keep the hurricane away.

You can take our weather system if you like, it's incredibly poor at the moment. I sit here with the rain battering away on the window like it has been all day. Infact, i read somewhere that this summer has been the wettest on record.

How bad would it be if on September 11th 2008, amidst the chaos created by Gustav, terrorists were able to taint emergency supplies with anthrax or something ?

I'm sure there are conspiracy theorists out there that will think that Gustav is an man made storm created by the American government in order to jack up oil prices for the profit of the politicians or something like that, especially if it hits land on Sept 11.

Oh no no no, it's going to make landfall in less than a week.

Last report I heard was that it was going to make landfall in 4 to 5 hours.

Yep. Been watching for a bit. At least it stayed at Cat 3 and winds right now about 115. That's really not that bad of a hurricane. I was in one of that level, and never left my apartment.

That was the strenght of winds that struck Scotland a few years ago when the media were reporting it to be Hurricane type weather.