Narrowing the Target

As a meteorologist, when I’m working on predicting the future path of tropical systems, it’s helpful when the computer models start to fall into agreement. That appears to be what the models are doing today.

Here are the key points the various models appear to be agreeing on today.

1) Landfall target is mostly Louisiana. Earlier in the week, some of the models had landfall as far west as Houston. Today, the furthest west is Lake Charles. The image above is the GFS model, and shows first landfall south of New Orleans and that’s about the eastern edge of the landfall forecasts.

2) More of the models are picking up on the idea of the Westward Drift. In a post earlier this week, I was talking about the idea that Christobal is going to get blocked temporarily by a high pressure ridge directly north of the path of the storm. That ridge will force Christobal to drift to the west for around 24 hours before continuing a northerly path. And, this appears to occur just around the time of landfall. What that means is that most of the Gulf Coast east of Central Louisiana will get drenching rains for 48 hours before the storm can escape.

3) The timing of landfall appears to be Sunday afternoon. The image above is for around noontime on Sunday. By Monday, the storm will likely be near Lafayette, LA. By Tuesday evening, it will be up near Shreveport and then getting pulled up further north from there.

We’ll keep watching this system through the weekend and work on keeping you up to date throughout.