Update. Tues June 29, 8:20 pm PDT. NWS, Miami, FL. Tropical Storm Alex is now officially a Hurricane, and the first hurricane of the season and the first June hurricane since 1995. Alex is about 255 miles / 415 km SE of Brownsville, TX, with winds of 75 mph, moving 9 mph / 15 km/hr . All watches remain in effect. Hurricane Alex is expected to make landfall late Wednesday evening in the Texas/ Mexico border area.
Status of Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Area’s “City of Ships” of Blown Out BP Well : Oil skimming operations by surface boats have been suspended. BP Oil is still so far collecting gas/oil from the riser pipe and the BOP, but the attempt to hook up another gathering ship to the BOP to suck up yet more oil from below the sea’s surface has been delayed due to high winds and waves. BP says they are still working on installing yet another floating riser pipe that they can then quickly disconnect from in the case of bad weather, but it’s not finished yet.
Status of relief well. Still close to wellbore, allegedly within 20 feet yesterday, now drilling past it and down and taking multiple magnetic soundings to locate it before attempt is made to intersect. Still supposedly on track for August of this year.
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Well, I’ve got bad news and good news.
The National Weather Service as of 10:00 pm CDT Monday has upgraded the Hurricane Watch for Tropical Storm Alex to a Hurricane Warning.
But it’s heading northwest to Texas. http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/r… Sorry, eastern Mexico, it’s going to visit you again too.
NOAA and the NWS has also put together a page on New Orleans/Baton Rouge/Deepwater Horizon which has every sort of weather graphic you’d want to see on this. Satellite, radar, wind, wave, trajectories, 37 different weather maps and charts to gawk at.
Bookmark this:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/lix/?n…