Finally the greatest depression of all time is now Tropical Storm Gustav according to the 2pm NHC update... Hurricane Warnings have already been issued for the southern coast of Hispaniola which is probably the fastest I have ever seen... Humberto last year was upgraded very fast, but I don't remember a storm going from a tropical wave to a depression to issuing hurricane warnings in 6 hours... One of the lessons I learned from Fay is not to be so quick with a definite forecast... The models are still having a lot of problems initializing Gustav so I'm going to wait until tomorrow to go into much more depth... Plus land interaction with both Hispaniola and Cuba is basically a coin flip...
We do know that the ridge is building back in strong from the east and this will eventually push Gustav off to the west... The problem is when does Gustav take that turn? This is the million dollar question because again 30 miles is going to make a HUGE difference... If it turns south of Cuba and head towards the Gulf we have a big problem on our hands... It it turns west over Cuba, riding a lot of the island, this will really hurt Gustav before it enters the Gulf... If it turns north of Cuba and heads toward the Gulf we also have a problem for the Keys and eventually a problem in the Gulf... Either way were going to have a tropical system in the Gulf, it just depends on how strong of a system we have... Hit a lot of land then it won't be that bad initially... Miss a lot of land then we have a monster on our hands before it even gets into the Gulf...
My gut tells me that were going to have a typical bias/error with the GFS... You would think it's underestimating the strength of the ridge which would lead me to go with a track just south of Cuba... Even though I will say the 12z GFDL takes Gustav across western Cuba into the Gulf... That actually scares me a little but we will see if that keeps up in the next day or two... Unfortunately this would be the worst track for the Gulf Coast as we could have a major hurricane entering the Gulf this Friday/Saturday... Were still 4/5 days away from that so again I'm going to hold off on a definite track/intensity forecast... My gut does say more south and west though... I hope I'm wrong because that would be bad news for the US... Just look at the heat potential across western Cuba into the south east Gulf of Mexico... That looks really really bad!!! Plus by this time Gustav will be under a upper level high which will just help ventilate this storm and promote rapid intensification... Southern track equals deep warm water, low shear, good ventilation, and a major hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico this Labor Day weekend!!!
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