TD4... soon to be Dean?
A tropical wave that emerged from the West African coast on Friday was upgraded to Tropical Depression #4 Monday morning. T.D. #4 at 11 p.m. EDT was located near 12.0 north, 35.0 west, or about 1780 miles east of the Lesser Antilles. The depression was moving due west at 20 mph and should continue on a general westward direction over the next several days.

East-to-west winds of 15-20 mph aloft are limiting deep thunderstorm activity on the eastern side of the circulation, keeping the depression from intensifying much. However, the wind shear is forecast to weaken and the depression will encounter warmer water temperatures on its path, meaning strengthening should occur over the next several days, with the depression likely becoming a tropical storm by Tuesday and even a hurricane later this week.

The next name in the list is Dean. Many of the long-range global models strengthen this system to a powerful hurricane towards the end of the week or weekend. A large high pressure region over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean is expected to prevent the system from curving off to the north and northeast; rather, it will track more westward toward the Lesser Antilles, arriving across these islands by the end of the week or weekend.

After that, there is uncertainty as to where the storm will track, but anybody in the Caribbean, eastern Mexico, Gulf Coast and even Southeast coast should monitor the progress of this developing system.

There's also "Invest 91L"...
There's another area closer to home we're keeping an eye on for a tropical system to potentially develop. A weak circulation developed Monday along a tropical wave just to the north of the Yucatan Peninsula at 22 north, 87 west. The combination of an upper-level low at 25 north and 92 west in the west-central Gulf of Mexico and the tropical wave is producing some very heavy rainfall over western Cuba and the northwestern Caribbean. As the low pressure tracks west-northwest at 10 to 15 mph away from the Yucatan and into the western Gulf, the upper-level low will move out of the way, and wind shear will weaken, giving the low a chance to develop into a tropical depression or even a tropical storm over the next 24 to 48 hours.

The track of the low will take it into Deep South Texas and far northeastern Mexico on Wednesday, bringing a surge in thunderstorms and potentially organized heavy rainfall for a couple of days, even if a tropical system does not develop. We'll have a better idea of the organization of the system Tuesday when a hurricane hunter plane is planned to investigate it.

 

Tropical Depression Four has strengthened to become Tropical Storm Dean in the central Atlantic as of 11 a.m. EDT Tuesday morning. Tropical Storm Dean is positioned at 11.7 north and 39.4 west, or about 1,490 miles east of the Lesser Antilles. Maximum sustained winds of Dean are 40 mph with higher gusts. Dean is moving toward the west at 23 mph and will continue on this track during the next 24 to 48 hours. Afterwards, Dean is forecast to move more toward the west-northwest to northwest as it approaches the Lesser Antilles and eastern Caribbean Sea.

Some wind shear in the vicinity of Dean will continue to weaken during the next day or two, allowing for Dean to strengthen a little more quickly looking ahead toward the weekend. Dean will also move into slightly warmer waters as it approaches the Lesser Antilles. This will add to the strengthening effect of Dean. Many of the long-range global models suggest that this storm will threaten the Lesser Antilles, and possibly Puerto Rico, as a significant tropical system, possibly a Category Two or Three hurricane.

After this point, it is possible that the storm will be drawn in a more northwesterly direction by an upper-level trough off the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, or it could bypass the trough to the south and turn more westerly. Those in the eastern Caribbean should pay especially close attention to the progress of this storm, while those on coastal portions of the eastern U.S. and the remainder of the Caribbean and Central America should watch for the potential of a tropical system next week.

Tropical Storm Dean continues to track quickly westward through the central Atlantic. As of 5 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Tropical Storm Dean is positioned at 12.2 north and 44.2 west, or about 1,170 miles east of the Lesser Antilles. Maximum sustained winds of Dean are near 50 mph with higher gusts.

Dean is moving toward the west at 18 mph and will continue on this general track during the next 48 hours. Afterwards, Dean is forecast to move more toward the west-northwest taking it into eastern Caribbean Sea later Friday or Friday night.

Some wind shear in the vicinity of Dean will continue to weaken during the next day or two, allowing for Dean to strengthen a little more quickly looking ahead toward the weekend. Dean will also move into slightly warmer waters as it approaches the Lesser Antilles. This will add to the strengthening effect of Dean. With the storm as far south as it is, the opportunity for a strike on the East Coast of the United States will diminish noticeably by the weekend. Presently, a track through the northern Caribbean seems most likely reaching Category 2 or perhaps 3 before interacting with the disrupting higher elevations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Those in the eastern and northern Caribbean should pay especially close attention to the progress of this storm.

Tropical Storm Dean continues to move west-northwest at 23 mph through the central Atlantic. As of 2 a.m. EDT Thursday, Tropical Storm Dean is near 13.2 degrees north and 51.3 degrees west, or 550 miles east of Barbados. Maximum sustained winds with the storm are near 70 mph with gusts to over hurricane force. Dean will become a hurricane Thursday morning and move to the west reaching the Lesser Antilles on Friday.

Dean is likely to continue to develop...

The computer model makes it pretty clear...

Dean is the first hurricane of the 2007 season in the Atlantic Basin. Dean continues to strengthen and move rapidly to the west at 24 mph through the Atlantic Ocean.

 

Dean will move west and reach the Lesser Antilles on Friday morning and midday. Hurricane Warnings are in effect for the islands of St. Lucia, Martinique, Dominica and Guadeloupe. A tropical storm warning has now been issued for the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico and tropical storm warnings remain in effect for the islands of Anguilla, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, Saba, St. Eustatius, Monserrat, Antigua, Nevis, St. Kitts, Barbuda, and St. Maarten. A Tropical Storm Watch has now been issued for the south coast of the Dominican Republic from Cabo Engano to the Haiti border. Dean is now a Category 2 hurricane.

MIAMI (Reuters) - Hurricane Dean uprooted trees, tore down power lines and ripped the roof off a hospital in St. Lucia on Friday as it raced into the Caribbean on a track that could take it near Jamaica as a dangerously powerful storm next week, officials said.

On the nearby French island of Martinique, sustained winds were measured at 75 mph (120 kph) with gusts up to 105 mph (170 kph), according to France's weather service.

Dean reached the Caribbean Sea through the narrow St. Lucia Channel after a long journey across the Atlantic and threatened to become a powerful Category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale in the area of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula in four days.

The first hurricane of the Atlantic season lifted the roof off the pediatric wing at Victoria Hospital in St. Lucia's capital, Castries. Patients had been moved from that area and there were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries on the former British colony of 170,000 people, said Dawn French, the island's emergency management director.

"It's very gusty and it's very rainy. We had a dead calm night and now we're getting walloped," said French, reached by telephone as she hunkered down to wait out the storm.

"We seem to have a lot of debris on the roads and some downed trees and downed power lines," she said. "The all-clear hasn't been given so we really haven't been able to get out to look around yet."

By 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT), Dean was 50 miles west-southwest of Martinique, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

It was moving to the west at a brisk 23 mph (37 kph), forecasters said, a speed that would take it well clear of the Lesser Antilles within a few hours.

Forecast track, and computer model predictions...

"I can say it could have been a lot worse. It's not that bad," said Clinton Charlery of Charlery's Car Rental in St. Lucia.

Dean still had top sustained winds of 100 mph (160 kph), making it a Category 2 storm.

Dean seems to be on the same track as Gilbert...

At 8:00 a.m. EDT Hurricane Dean was located near 16.8 north, 74.3 west or about 200 miles east-southeast of Kingston, Jamaica. Dean is a powerful Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 145 mph and maximum wind gusts of 180 mph. Hurricane Dean is on a west-northwest track bearing down on Jamaica at 18 mph. The central pressure of Dean has remained at 921 millibars, or 27.20 inches of mercury.

A hurricane warning remains in effect for Jamaica, where the storm should pass very close to later today. A hurricane warning also remains in effect for the southwestern peninsula of Haiti from west of the Haiti-Dominican Republic border to Port-Au-Prince and for the Cayman Islands. A tropical storm warning is in effect for the coast of Haiti north of Port-Au-Prince to the northern Haiti-Dominican Republic border. A tropical warning is also in effect for parts of eastern Cuba, including Guantanamo Bay. A tropical storm watch is in effect for parts of central Cuba. The tropical storm warning has been discontinued for the Dominican Republic.

Dean continues to be steered by a persistent mid- to upper-level ridge of high pressure to its north, and this pattern should last through early in the week. An upper trough of low pressure continues to move quickly to the west across the central Gulf of Mexico. This is allowing that persistent ridge of high pressure to also shift west and maintain itself to the north of Dean, so a track more to the west-northwest is favored through the remainder of the day today and early this week. This will bring Dean just south of Jamaica later today and to the south of the Cayman Islands early Monday. It will then move across the Yucatan peninsula later Monday night into Tuesday. Latest global models are trending the forecast track of Dean southward and that is supported by the strong upper-level ridge that should maintain itself to the north of Dean. This would favor another landfall on the northern Mexico Gulf coast around midweek which would be better news for U.S. interests.

Dean will cause torrential and flooding rainfall, damaging and catastrophic winds, coastal flooding and serious mudslides to the Island of Jamaica later today and tonight. Its interaction with Jamaica will disrupt the intensification process slightly, but by tomorrow, the hurricane will be over very warm water in the northwest Caribbean. Satellite and ocean sensors suggest the water over the western Caribbean is the warmest in the entire Atlantic Basin. The warm water is very deep, providing a lot of potential energy for Dean. Dean could bring serious damaging winds and heavy rain to the eastern resort areas along and near the east coast of the Yucatan similar to what was experienced during Wilma in 2005 or even Gilbert in 1988. Beyond its encounter with the Yucatan, Dean should continue on a west to west-northwest course later Tuesday and Wednesday.

The hurricane will lose some strength during its encounter with the Yucatan but could still gain strength and still be a major hurricane again as it moves toward the Mexican coast Wednesday. Current and projected future movement would bring Dean onshore along the Mexican coast sometime Wednesday evening.

Hurricane Dean continues to move away from Jamaica after hitting the island nation with sustained winds at least 111 miles per hour, and gusts of at least 138 miles per hour. The Cayman Islands will feel the greatest impact today as the center of Dean passes to the south of the islands on its way to a potential landfall along the eastern Yucatan Peninsula Coast on Tuesday. Heavy rain, high winds, and dangerous surf and storm surge conditions are expected in the Caymans today.

Right: Shuttle's view of Dean.

At 8 a.m. ET, the center of Hurricane Dean was located about 440 miles east of Belize City over the Caribbean. It is moving toward the west at about 21 mph. Dean is expected to continue on a west-northwestward track. Maximum sustained winds are near 150 mph.

Weather conditions will deteriorate over the Yucatan and northern Belize tonight ahead of the storm. Dean is expected to cross the Yucatan Peninsula and re-emerge into the Bay of Campeche, which is the southwestern Gulf of Mexico, Tuesday night and make a final landfall somewhere along the mainland Mexican Coast sometime on Wednesday.

There have been reports via radio of uprooted trees, rooftops torn away, impassable roads, and a mudslide in Jamaica as the storm passed through on Sunday.

Space shuttle Endeavour on Sunday cut short its visit to the International Space Station, even though it now appears that Mission Control will not be threatened by Hurricane Dean.

Landing is targeted for 12:31 p.m. ET Tuesday, rather than Wednesday as originally scheduled. Because of the early end to the mission, the astronauts had to leave a few tasks undone, and Endeavour teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan had to skip a conversation with schoolchildren.

The shuttle usually circles the station after undocking so the crew can take photos to check the station's condition, but that step was dropped Sunday to save time.

The early cutoff of Endeavour's flight also forced NASA to abridge Saturday's spacewalk by an hour, leaving undone the task of fastening down some shields that protect the station from space debris. The station crew or the astronauts on the next shuttle flight can probably finish the job, deputy shuttle program manager John Shannon has said.

The Endeavour crew spent most of Sunday inspecting the spacecraft's exterior in preparation for re-entry, focusing on potential damage from space junk on the shuttle's wings and nose.

The early departure from orbit was the latest setback during a mission that did not go precisely as NASA would have liked.

During liftoff, a piece of foam fell off the shuttle's fuel tank and gouged Endeavour's heat shield, in an eerie echo of the events leading to the disintegration of shuttle Columbia in 2003. After days of study, shuttle managers decided the damage to the Endeavour posed no threat to the crew or to the shuttle itself.

Mission managers decided to curtail the flight late Saturday, when it seemed possible that Dean could target Houston — home of the shuttle's Mission Control Center. By Sunday evening, Dean had veered onto a track that made it unlikely to strike Houston.

Shannon noted there was discussion Friday of closing NASA's Houston campus today because of the hurricane threat. "We had to provide opportunities for them to evacuate," he said.

A skeleton crew of flight controllers could have overseen the shuttle's landing from a backup control center at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but that emergency plan would have deprived managers of data and expertise.

It's unusual for NASA to change a shuttle's landing date because of severe weather threatening Houston. Usually it's bad weather at the shuttle's main landing site at Kennedy that forces the shuttle to delay its touchdown or to divert to a backup landing strip in California.

There is a chance of showers at Kennedy for Tuesday, flight director Matt Abbott said.

To meet its compressed schedule, Endeavour pulled away from the space station at 7:56 a.m. ET on Sunday, one day early.

"Have a good trip home, a safe trip," station commander Fyodor Yurchikhin said after the shuttle had backed away.

Hurricane Dean made landfall around 3:30 am (Central Time) with 165 mile per hour winds near Costa Maya, Mexico. It is the first landfalling category 5 hurricane to make landfall in the Atlantic basin since Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida in 1992.

Its pressure of 906 millibars is the third lowest pressure at landfall behind the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane in the Florida Keys and Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 in Cancun, Mexico.

Data from the hurricane hunter aircraft shows that Dean continued to strengthen all the way up to its landfall. Now that the center is moving ashore, it will weaken as it crosses the Yucatan Peninsula today. However, Dean should maintain hurricane status and then restrengthen over the southern Bay of Campeche before making a final landfall Wednesday in the Mexican state of Veracruz.

As of 4 am (Central time), the center of Dean was located near 18.7 North, 87.8 West, which is about 35 miles east-northeast of Chetumal, Mexico, or 195 miles east-southeast of Campeche, Mexico. Maximum sustained winds are near 165 miles per hour. Minimum pressure is near 906 millibars.

This was from yesterday, before the storm hit land...

The resorts of Cancun and Cozumel will not feel the full brunt of Hurricane Dean but waves on the order of 18 to 24 feet are expected to crash along the shores resulting in severe beach erosion. Squalls of tropical storm-force winds and heavy rains will rotate in across the resorts early this morning, then improve slowly later this afternoon.

Increasing rain near Cancun on the left, a vew of the destruction in Jamaca on the right

 

As of 7:00 a.m. CDT Wednesday, Hurricane Dean was located near 20.5 north and 95.5 west, or about 120 miles east-southeast of Tuxpan, Mexico.

It made landfall early on Tuesday morning just northeast of Chetumal, as a Category 5 hurricane with sustained winds of 165 mph and minimum central pressure of 906 mb, or 26.75 inches of mercury. This was the eighth lowest on record in the Atlantic Basin, and third lowest at the time of landfall. Dean is also the first Category 5 hurricane to make landfall in the Atlantic Basin since Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Currently, the maximum sustained winds are 90 mph and the central pressure is 976 mb, or 28.91 inches of mercury. This makes Dean a strong Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

Once Dean moves inland, it will encounter the Sierra Madre Oriental Mountains Wednesday afternoon and evening. These mountains rise to an elevation of 12,000 feet. The lifting of this tropical air over that mountain chain will lead to torrential rainfall and mudslides along and just north of the remaining circulation from Dean. Rainfall of 10-20 inches will deluge this area of Mexico, causing life-threatening flooding. The lower-level circulation from Dean will get wiped out, but the circulation roughly above 12,000 feet will hold together and maintain a swath of rain and wind over central Mexico Wednesday night and Thursday.

It's very possible the remaining upper-level circulation from Dean might end up moving back over water in the eastern Pacific just south of Baja California Thursday night and Friday.

Last night, Dean was downgraded to a tropical depression, with the final advisory being issued by the National Hurricane Center.

However, as Dean continues to move west across central Mexico, the threat for flooding will remain high over interior Mexico through today.

MEXICO CITY — Hurricane Dean saved some of its worst for last, killing eight people after shrinking to a rainy tropical depression over central Mexico, authorities reported Thursday.

RIGHT: A woman stands outside her home damaged by Hurricane Dean

In the state of Puebla, a family of four, including two children, died when a mudslide hit a highway overpass Thursday and crushed their car, state civil-protection authorities said. Wednesday, a government official died in a car wreck while checking for damage during the storm, and a 76-year-old man was killed when part of his house fell on him.

A 35-year-old woman and a 14-year-old girl died after a roof collapsed Wednesday in the state of Hidalgo, state authorities said.

Another man died trying to ford a rain-swollen river in Veracruz state on Wednesday. But because he ignored warnings from rescue personnel, state officials said they would not count his death in the storm total.

This boy sits next to his destroyed house

The same held for a man who was reported electrocuted by power lines while trying to secure his roof before the storm hit Wednesday morning.

The storm toll in Mexico brought the total number of fatalities associated with Dean to 28, most in the Caribbean. The hurricane had reached its full strength, Category 5, when it struck a relatively isolated stretch of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on Tuesday. So far no deaths have been reported there, although property damage was extensive.

Officials said Thursday that about 90,000 homes were damaged or destroyed in Mexico , with an estimated 60,000 people in shelters overnight Wednesday. The Yucatan lost nearly 400 square miles of crops.

Tetanus shots and water bottles are being used to cut down on health issues caused by the storm

After Dean landed on the Veracruz coastline Wednesday as a Category 2 hurricane, it quickly began to lose strength. Within hours it was downgraded to a tropical depression. But its arrival near the end of central Mexico's rainy season caused some landslides and flooding.

By Thursday afternoon, the rains had stopped and Hurricane Dean was done.

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