For the Texans between Corpus and Houston...

[Steve]

You might find some of this of interest. It's from "Claudette Stalls" page 3 at CFHC. I wanted to throw it out there to the Storm2kers for kicks. The post deals with Fox-8 (N.O.) 9pm weather update by Jeff Basquin. The others cover some general topics. What I didn't copy and paste was that Fox 8 had a reporter up there with the Hurricane Hunters.
Other things of note tonight include the continued cooling of the Gulf relative to normal (near-future implications) and the return of the SOI to just slightly negative. Here's the post:

That's Bob Breck's station. He's the best in the city and one of the top mets. in the south. His #2 guy is on weekends, Jeff Basquin who has been on tv here a few years (not native). He's not in Bob's league, but he's not bad either.

So he came on, gave some vortex info - North .3, W 0 and also a 991 reading. He put up the 4pm forecast track and then did something I thought was ballsy of Fox-8 and that was a 'more likely' track. It stair-stepped up, over, up, over to the Central-Upper TX coast. His reasoning was that the ridge over the SW US was moving in a little slower than predicted, and with the storms firing off out front of the nose of the trof beginning to lift out, there has been a bit of a northward tug on the otherwise stuck system. He either called for 2 or 3 more jumps, which makes a little sense considering what we've watched the last 3-4 days. West, tighten NE, west/wnw, tighten N-NE.

This post is just to report what he said. It doesn't have anything to do with me changing my call. But here's a little creole food for thought. A slow moving Cat 1 or Cat 2 at landfall north of where officially predicted changes the game. To date, areas north of Tampa Bay have gotten the most from Claudette. But were she to come up around 27-28 before she got to 96W, that would mean the chances would increase that anyyone between Escambia Co., FL to Harris Co., TX could see squall lines, short-lived tornados and flooding. If you've ever gotten caught under an E/W or NE/SW band for any length of time, you know what i'm talking about. If you've never experienced a training feeder band, it's like this. Ordinarilly bands sweep through an area bringing gusty winds and brief, torrential downpours. They usually last from 2 about to 15 minutes. But when you have a stationary or slow moving storm, to your south or west, you can get caught under the same feeder band for an extended period of time. Amounts of 2-10" can easily fall over the same areas causing flash flooding of streams, canals and urban areas. And further, if landfall isn't until Wednesday, there's 2-3 days of potential flooding anywhere in the Northern Gulf. Another thing about Basquin's forecast, is that if the storm stays slow after landfall - say 8-10mph, areas closer to Houston could be in for some heavy rains. It will be interesting to see what the NHC said at 10:00. It took me about 30 minutes to write this one up, so I gotta go see what they said.

[Lindaloo]

Georges was a perfect example of what you are talking about. He came in and stalled. Pascagoula was on the "bad side" when he made landfall. We saw flooding like we have never seen before and had wind damage more than was expected from a CAT 1 cane. Areas that have NEVER flooded in canes before were suddenly under water. And I observed one of those tornadoes from his "feederbands."

[GalvestonDuck]

Two songs (oldies) come to mind this morning.

For us -- "The wa-ay-ting is the hard-est part."

For Claudette - "Didja ever have to make up you mind?"

[vbhoutex]

Steve, should I cuss you or thank you for backing up my thoughts? I am still looking at things but I what I am seeing is what he says. That ridge is gonna have to hump it hard to even become an effect and the trough is already sliding E which will tend to hold the northerly component in there along with the westerly components. I've also noticed the bands starting to build on the NW and W side, which means she may be able to wrap that center today and become Hurricane Claudette by landfall. Where is landfall? Hard call right now, since nothing is certain with the tough or ridge, but my guess would be NE of CC, possibly as far N as the Matagorda area.

That was a very Ballsy thing for the OCM to do!!! Most try to "tow the line", something I have never agreed with in case anyone didn't notice.

Well I need to cut the yard, and make sure I still have the supplies I think I do since there is a good chance we will lose power in the grid I'm in. For some reason it is always unstable!

[Steve]

Good luck with it vb. I'm hoping to see a couple of rotating bands out of my office window. If it gets really bad this afternoon and floods, I'll post some pictures from downtown. But for now, the bulk of any bad weather in Louisiana is in the coastal areas.

Steve