Worries about a tropical disturbance in the Caribbean known as 99L began to fester earlier this week when the company that developed a hurricane-tracking app posted a map image showing 99L developing into a hurricane and barrelling right up the Atchafalaya Basin. Worth noting: The app costs money, and no doubt plenty of storm-wearing Gulf Coast residents snapped it up. They definitely shared it on social media — enough so that local meteorologists took note and began studying it.
Meteorologist Steve Caparotta at WAFB in Baton Rouge has been a voice of calm with his running blog on the issue. His latest post, from Thursday, is titled “The Trend is Our Friend,” and it is Valium for the hurricane-harangued heart:
[T]he latest GFS (American model) run started to roll in and it was sticking to its guns showing little becoming of ‘99L’ even as it entered what many, including myself, saw as more favorable conditions in the Gulf of Mexico.
Here’s where the trend becomes your friend. The big news came early this afternoon as the revered European model came in and was seemingly starting to fall in line with the GFS. It showed little becoming of ‘99L’ as it approached and moved near/just south of south Florida. But a key difference is that this latest run of the Euro still does at least develop a tropical storm in the eastern Gulf before moving it northward toward the Big Bend region of the Florida panhandle.
Read more here.