Delta Dances Towards Louisiana

Hurricane Delta is traveling over the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula this morning. She’s headed towards the Gulf on a northwesterly path. For the next 36 hours, it will look like Delta has a bullseye towards Houston if she just keeps on a straight path. But, one of the truisms about weather is that storms don’t usually stay on a straight path. They like to turn and bend, and that’s exactly what we’re expecting from Delta.

By Thursday afternoon, Delta will begin to turn towards the north, and eventually towards the north-northeast. So, instead of striking Texas, she will make landfall in Louisiana between Lake Charles and New Orleans. Most models have her going towards Lafayette, with the dirty part of the storm hitting Baton Rouge.

This is the GFS forecast for noon on Friday. Notice the eye of the storm is just southeast of Lake Charles.

Here’s another look at the storm from the HWRF model. Again, Delta is southeast of Lake Charles, traveling north-north east at noon on Friday. The center of the storm is between 93W and 92W, and just above the 29th parallel.

There’s actually pretty remarkable agreement with the computer models on Delta. This is a look at the spaghetti plots from about a dozen weather models presented by Tropical Tidbits. Notice how tightly packed the tracks are. When the models are all seeing the same thing, that gives meteorologists confidence in the forecast. Computer models usually do well with a very powerful storm that is already traveling at a good rate of speed. Delta certainly fits those criteria.

So, we’re expecting landfall Friday afternoon in the Central Louisiana coast. Delta will be back up to a Category 4 Hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, but there may be a little weakening just before the coast. The water in the northern Gulf isn’t as warm as it was earlier this season, and that should sap a little energy out of Delta. But, Delta will still make landfall as a major hurricane, the second major hurricane to hit Louisiana this year.

It’s likely there will need to be evacuations all the way up to I-10 in Louisiana again. There are also likely to be significant power and infrastructure problems with massive flooding along the coast and inland up to Baton Rouge/Lafayette. Now is the time to get prepared. If you’re in an area that requires evacuation, then you’ll want to be on the road by tomorrow morning. If you’re in areas that are likely to lose power and see flooding, you need to get ready for those emergencies today.

We’ll keep posting updates on Delta as the storm gets closer.