2:10pm CT Tuesday: We’re talking about Hurricane Delta this afternoon, which has undergone rapid intensification and is now a powerful Category 4 hurricane with 140 mph winds. (It was only named Delta 30 hours ago.) The storm will approach the Yucatan Peninsula tonight, and likely make landfall somewhere near Cancún early on Wednesday. This will be a dangerous hurricane for that area. By Wednesday evening the storm will be back out over the Gulf of Mexico, moving to the northwest.
Track
Overall, the track forecast remains largely unchanged. The 12z models are beginning to show a tighter cluster of solutions in which Delta moves to the west-northwest, or northwest for most of Wednesday and Thursday. Then, when Delta is a few hundred miles offshore from South Padre Island, it should begin a pretty sharp turn to the north. All of the best available guidance now shows a final landfall between the Texas-Louisiana border—very near where the devastating Hurricane Laura came ashore in August—and further east, around Morgan City and Houma. This tighter clustering of models is consistent with the National Hurricane Center forecast track, and increases our confidence in where Delta is going to go.
With that said, we are still roughly three-and-a-half days away from landfall, so the average track error is about 120 miles, and we also have to account for the possibility of wobbles. The bottom line with Delta’s track is that right now every available bit of evidence we have suggests this storm is going to turn toward Louisiana—but its future path is not 100 percent locked down.
Intensity
Delta has had near ideal conditions for strengthening over the last 24 hours, including very warm waters not just at the surface, but also below. This is important because, as the storm moves across the ocean it churns up seas from below, a process known as upwelling, which can bring cooler water to the surface. One measurement of an ocean’s depth of warm waters is its “Tropical Cyclone Heat Potential,” and basically any value of 80 or higher is conducive for intensification. As you can see from a recent map of this potential, the waters in the northwestern Caribbean Sea are explosively warm.
This will begin to change as Delta moves away from the Southern Gulf of Mexico, at which time the storm also should begin to encounter more wind shear. These factors should help to limit the intensity of Delta as it moves toward the northern Gulf of Mexico, but it remains possible that this system could be a major hurricane at landfall.
Houston effects
Along this track Houston is likely to experience only very mild effects from Delta—perhaps some rain showers on Thursday, Friday or Saturday. Seas will reach their maximum on Friday, but should be below the levels the region experienced during Hurricane Laura.
Needless to say all of this depends upon the storm’s track, and if that changes significantly, so will our local forecast.
Our next update will come no later than 8:30 pm CT.
Isn’t this pair of Gamma-Delta very similar to the Laura-Marco pair earlier? Both sets coming from the Western Caribbean Sea and heading over and around Yucatan. Then Louisiana.
A few differences. Marco came up roughly the same way as Gamma but went north and burned out Gamma is making a loop around the peninsula as it burns out. Laura intensified rapidly, coming along Cuba and then turned north as it built up steam in the Gulf. Delta is coming up the same route as Marco/Gamma, intensifying rapidly in the Western Caribbean but will hopefully begin to burn out as it enters the Gulf.
If Delta makes the turn discussed here, they will both be large storms shooting up into Louisiana that pushed through decaying predecessor storms.
So, to my eyes, there are some commonalities in the forecast outcome, but a lot of differences in how they are getting there. I’m sure that there are more commonalities/differences, but as always I only know enough to get things wrong and have to defer to Eric and Matt.
I have dear friends in Cozumel and they’ve weathered so many storms, but they are very worried about this one. I believe they are justified in their fear. Do you agree?
From above: ” The storm will approach the Yucatan Peninsula tonight, and likely make landfall somewhere near Cancún early on Wednesday. This will be a dangerous hurricane for that area.”
So, yes, they said exactly that.
Poor Louisiana.
Thank you for all your great work for the people of southeast Texas. We appreciate your dedication and efforts.
Eric — thank you so much for all your extra hard work on our behalf, especially with Matt being away! We are more grateful for you than we can say!
This quick development is just another thing to not count hurricane season out too soon.
I’ll admit that I was dancing in my seat at all the recent dry air and cooler-than-summer temps but now I’m sitting still watching this thing chanting “make that turn, make that turn”. I’m loathe to wish this on Louisiana so I’ll wish it on Mississippi instead. (gallows humor)
So on a scale from “meh” to “suicidal maniac”, how dumb would it be to drive to Atlanta on Saturday? Sorry to be that person in the comments, but somebody’s gotta do it 😛
Every time we try to get out of town, there’s another freakin hurricane. Thanks 2020.
Unless you can somehow go…south?…of Louisiana, I think you should reschedule. I can’t imagine any of LA will be passable this weekend, and driving north and around seems impossible based on the storm track.
If’ you’re planning on taking I-69 north to I-20 before heading east, you should be good. If you’re planning on taking I-10 to I-49 to cut north to I-20, well, that’s not the best plan.
just looked at another forecast site and they have a TS Delta moving across northern Louisiana Saturday morning at 0900. Might move your trip to Friday.
hello and thanks for your great site. we live in west galveston -12 mile road. we left for laura and beta due to fear of storm surges. what do you think about another evacuation?
Why is there no visible eye on the satellite view of Delta, even though it is a cat 4? That is really strange. Is it too small to show up on satellite?
Last I read, the eye was only 4 miles across. The satellite resolution might not even pick that up, especially if their clouds overshooting the eye.