If you look closely at this graphic you will see that the center of this low pressure system is just to my west by about 20 miles. Crazy. Just a couple of days ago this low pressure system was heading in a westerly direction. Since then it just turned to the north and west and finally this morning due north. Since this morning the National Hurricane Center gave this a 50 50 chance of developing into a larger system. Also the forecasters have been unable to find the exact position of the low which is pretty important as the amount of vigor that a sailor may encounter depends on the relative position to the low. So since the sat photos looked scary the hurricane folk sent out a hurricane hunter.
So being hurricane obsessed I learned today where the website is to track the data in real time as it is transmitted from the aircraft back to HQ. So I did and first thing I read is 48 knots......tropical storm......then 68 knots at the surface. Holy toledo I thought the storm had exploded which is really not rare and of course its proximity makes it stupid to try and head for the mangroves. I did notice some abnormalities in how the data was being posted. Pretty much it looks like a spreadsheet and not all the data in the surface wind windows were being added. Some were skipped. Well the instrument was screwed up! Not to long after the hurricane center updated the storm data derived from the aircraft. So the low center was moved nearly 60 miles north placing nearly ontop of me. Good news! Surface winds are 30 to 35 mph. Can do. So it appears another bullet has been dodged by team Christa. I hate the stress of it all. So current conditions in the anchorage is 15 to 25 knots from the SSW with numerous squalls and tons of rain. As Tom Larson would say, I've got storm madness I've had it before. I think I'll give blogging a rest for today.
Capt Chris
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