View Full Version : Tropical Storm Arlene forms in Caribbean, heads toward Gulf

06-09-2005, 04:28 PM
Associated Press
Posted June 9 2005, 7:05 AM EDT

MIAMI -- Arlene, the first tropical storm of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, picked up speed Thursday in the northwest Caribbean and edged closer to western Cuba, where a tropical storm watch was in effect.

With maximum sustained winds reaching 40 mph, the system became the first named storm of the season just before 7 a.m. Thursday, according to forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Tropical storms have top sustained winds of 39 mph to 74 mph.

The Cuban government issued a tropical storm watch for the western province of Pinar Del Rio and the Isle of Youth.

The storm is expected to move into the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend, forecasters said.

The storm was causing heavy rains and squalls across the Cayman Islands and western and central Cuba. Forecasters warned that very heavy rains in Nicaragua and Honduras could cause flash floods and mud slides.

At 5 a.m. EDT, the center of the storm was about 225 miles south-southeast of the western tip of Cuba. It was moving north at about 8 mph.

Last year, the first named storm of the season was Tropical Storm Alex, which formed Aug. 1. It later became a hurricane and came within 9 miles of the Outer Banks, N.C.

Within weeks, Florida was struck by Hurricane Charley, the first of four hurricanes to hit the state last season. It was followed by hurricanes Frances, Ivan and Jeanne. The four hurricanes damaged one out of every five homes in Florida.

The storms caused about 130 deaths in the U.S. and are blamed for a total $22 billion in damage.

Hurricane season began June 1 and ends Nov. 30

06-09-2005, 04:33 PM
Heh. FX had a decent movie on earlier this week called "Oil Storm". Essentially it is a doomsday scenario of a huge hurricane hitting New Orleans and knocking out the main port for oil 30mi away from NO. Along with that it whiped out 3/4 of the oil rigs in the gulf and severed the pipeline connection from the south to the north.

Following that up, once a secondary port opened a oil tanker and a chem tanker collided and blew up, blocking that port.

Essentially, the whole US was cut off from oil. Saudi was in civil unrest, we send 20k troops over, 4k die when an oil field is blown by terrorists. Oil hits 150/barrel, 10/gal. Economy practically shuts down.

Russia offers to send supertankers, only to have those purchased by China while en route to the US. US economy seems close to collapse as Saudi is still not able to control it's flow.

They had "interviews" with people all over the country, following several families and people. Seemed pretty real.

Eventually we got Russia to agree to sell us the oil in return for 40bn in subsidies to increase Siberian output.

Their hurricane scenario killed 10k in NO within one day as a 30ft storm surge destroyed the -13ft sea level NO.

Hope that never happens, would be a sad day. I also hope this season is a bit less active, but I doubt it.