Skip to footer

Isaac forecast: Storm could hit as hurricane near Pensacola, Fla.

But landfall wouldn't be until next Wednesday, so there's still considerable uncertainty about the projection. Tropical storm Isaac could affect Tampa before then, but that's still uncertain, too.

|
Maglio Perez/Reuters
Waves break on the shore, as the Caribbean Sea churns up by Tropical Storm Isaac's passing to the south, in Santo Domingo, August 24. Tropical Storm Isaac passed the Dominican Republic and headed toward Haiti on Friday, rumbling slowly west across the Caribbean after unleashing heavy rain on parts of Puerto Rico.
  • By Pete Spotts Staff writer

Tropical storm Isaac is regaining strength as it heads toward the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Cuba, according to forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

But the tropical cyclone is not expected to reach hurricane strength until it's well up into the eastern Gulf of Mexico, off the west coast of Florida, forecasters say.

By Tuesday, during the Republican National Convention, the latest track estimate puts the center of Isaac some 217 miles west of Tampa, although the city still falls into the broad region covered by the error for track forecasts four days out. And it's unclear at this stage how far from the storm's center tropical-storm-force winds will extend.

In the meantime, if Isaac's track and intensity through the weekend hold close to the projections as of 11 a.m., Eastern time, on Friday, that could be a bit of good news for the western Dominican Republic and Haiti. On Thursday, forecasters were expecting the storm to reach hurricane strength just before making landfall across the southern tip of Hispaniola, the island that the two countries share.

Even so, Isaac is loaded with moisture and is still expected to dump as much as 20 inches of rain in some locations on the island. The storm is expansive enough to bring two to four inches of rain to Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and the southern Bahamas – all of which are under tropical-storm warnings.

The Cuban government also has posted tropical-storm warnings for the eastern two-thirds of the island, where Isaac could bring up to 10 inches of rain to some areas.

The latest advisory from the National Hurricane Center puts a poorly organized center for Isaac 163 miles south of Santo Domingo. The storm currently is posting maximum sustained winds of 45 miles an hour and is churning along its path at about 15 miles an hour.

Current projections have Isaac making landfall as a hurricane about 15 miles west of Pensacola on Wednesday morning, but this is a lead time where track forecasts are at their largest. The region of landfall uncertainty stretches from southeastern Louisiana through the center of northern Florida.

Once Isaac reaches terra firma, some forecast models suggest Isaac could curve to the northeast, where it would bring some badly needed rain to Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Roughly half of Georgia is experiencing severe to exceptional long-term drought.

Meanwhile, tropical storm Joyce, which attained that standing Thursday in the central Atlantic, is now only a memory. Joyce encountered two features that spell doom for tropical cyclones: a broad area of dry air and changes in wind speed or direction with height, known as shear.

Both sapped what little starch Joyce had accumulated. The storm has been demoted to a garden-variety low-pressure system with showers and thunderstorms, and forecasters give it little or no chance of reorganizing. Indeed, it could dissipate as a low-pressure system at any time, forecasters say.

The impact: a bit of grumpy weather over Bermuda Monday and Tuesday.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Isaac forecast: Storm could hit as hurricane near Pensacola, Fla.
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0824/Isaac-forecast-Storm-could-hit-as-hurricane-near-Pensacola-Fla
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe