Hanna, Ike, and Josephine

The focus of this post is to update the status on Hanna due to its threat to the United States. In passing just want to mention Tropical Storm Ike is getting better organized and is moving rapidly westward across the Atlantic Ocean. He is expected to be a hurricane as early as tomorrow and could approach category 3 status by the weekend. Right now the consensus is for him to hit the Bahamas. From there it could hit Cuba, Florida, the SE US, or even the Gulf States if it were to travel through the Florida Straits.

Now onto Hanna....
She is definitely in a hostile environment right now with strong northwesterly shear tearing apart any convection that tries to form. This is shown below by all the colder cloud tops being shunted to the east. The National Hurricane Center notes this is expected to change soon with shear relaxing and upper environmental conditions should become more favorable for better organization and could regain hurricane status Wednesday night or Thursday. Hanna has plenty of warm water including the Gulf Stream to go over so how strong she gets if she gets to hurricane status is still up in the air.

Today she has been drifting around north of Haiti. Air Force Reconnaissance found that the center of circulation was drifting east at times. It could be possible that the center is completing a loop as a NW motion is expected to begin on Wednesday. A new Air Force Reconnaissance plane will be in Hanna after 1 am so we should know more then but of course I will be sleeping.

Computer model forecasts have a general idea of hitting the SE US somewhere from Jacksonville, Florida to Wilmington, North Carolina. It should be noted that any slight deviation in track could make a huge difference in its landfall location. From there she is expected to race NNW or N through the Carolina's and up into the NE by Saturday Night.

11 pm September 2 NHC OFFICIAL FORECAST TRACK. (NOTE DO NOT PAY ATTENTION TO THE EXACT POINT BUT THE CONE OF UNCERTAINTY)



Infrared Satellite Image Taken at 10:45 PM