I got a pretty good email question from John in Peyton last week. He wanted to know, “Have the remnants of Hurricanes ever made it to Colorado. I remember hearing something to that extent several years ago, it wasn’t severe weather or anything, but I was just wondering?”

Its a good question John! The answer is yes, but not very often. Nothing has ever made it here as an official tropical system (Tropical Depression, Tropical Storm or Hurricane), but the remnants of several eastern Pacific systems have produced decent rainfall in the past.

The graphic above shows the path of all tropical systems since 1851. I’ve highlighted a few in bright green that have gotten close to Colorado as dying tropical depressions. At least three of those brighter green tracks you see to the southwest of the state, did produce moderate to heavy rain events as they moved through Colorado, but you can see that they had weakend below trackable tropical depressions when they did so. They were just areas of higher moisture content when they arrived to our home state.

I’ve annoted the large scale weather features aloft over North America when Ike made landfall late Friday evening. Notice the typical west to east (jetstream) flow that was pushing our weather maker (remember all of that rain!) through the state late last week. As tropical systems move northward from the Atlantic Basin and the Gulf of Mexico, they get caught up in the westerlies and never make it to our state. Note in the path graphic at the beginning of this post that one lonely storm actually managed to make it into central Kansas from the Gulf, but that is as close as anything has gotten.

However, storms in the eastern Pacific basin and the Baja Penninsula or Gulf of California will occasionally get caught up in these westerlies to our southwest and eventually move into our state. We’re far enough away from the fuel source of tropical cyclones (warm acean water) that they are all weaker than tropical depressions by the time they arrive, but the answer to John’s question is yes! It does happen, but rarely. Thanks for the email John and if you ever have anything you’d like me or any of the other STORMTRACKERS to answer you can leave a comment below or send an email!

The eye wall moved over the Louisiana coastline between 7 and 8 this morning.  Specifics are that it is a high end category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained windspeeds to around 110 mph.  Here is a look at Gustav via STORMTRACKER 13 Live HD Doppler as of about 8:00 with the center of the circulation passing just south of Houma…

Observations are available over the Gulf of Mexico from various sources.  Here is a great link to all of them, http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/maps/WestGulf_inset.shtml.  Some links are active, some are not but the day has been impressive.  I’ve seen 80 mph wind gusts on the high end and wave heights of 20 to 30 feet.  Like all of us, we’re just here watching and waiting to see what the impacts actually end up being…

This storm is a little weaker/smaller then Katrina, and my personal thoughts/hopes are that it will impact New Orleans somewhat less than Katrina did, but the ocean observing stations that are showing 20 to 30 foot waves are southeast of New Orleans suggesting that the storm surge will be very significant.  The levee systems that are not yet completed to the specifications set after Katrina, the rest will be known soon…

Hey, even if its not out your backdoor, if its weather related you can bet we’re tracking it…we’re just a bunch of weather fanatics when it comes down to it. The first hurricane of the season has formed in the Atlantic Basin and strengthened today to a category 3 hurricane and when I grabbed this image a little after 6pm, it had a well defined eye.

The official National Hurricane Center track takes this storm to the northwest over the next several days and eventually turning northward. This path should send it into an area of increased wind shear, an environment not favorable for the strengthening of tropical systems. As a result, it will likely decrease in strength to a category 1 or 2 storm as it gets close to Bermuda by late in the week or start of the weekend. The official track currently takes it east of Bermuda, but notice with time the the “forecast cone of uncertainty” in the red shaded area gets larger as our accuracy of forecasting its location and strength goes down with time. We’ll keep our eyes on it for the rest of the week!