Philippe and Rita

Philippe is now a hurricane, but will probably only impact Bermuda, if that. Rita is of greater concern. The latest run of the BAMM computer model has her hitting New Orleans, but thankfully, most of the other models have her going further south. Also good (relatively speaking) is that the Gulf waters aren't quite as warm as they were when Katrina exploded in size there a couple of weeks ago. Still, every state with coastline in the Gulf should keep a close eye on this one. The official forcast has her becoming at least a category 3 (though another category 4 will not surprise me) before hitting southern Texas. The Florida Keys have already started evacuations in anticipation of her strengthening before her arrival there.

A little perspective on how this season stacks up against other hurricane seasons: on average, there are 10.6 named storms each year. 5.9 of those become hurricanes, and 2 of those become major hurricanes. So far this year there have been 17 named storms, 8 hurricanes, and 4 major hurricanes. The most major hurricanes in a single season was 8. The most hurricanes in a single season was 12. The most named storms that have occured in a single year since 1944 is 19 (in 1933, there were 21 systems reported, but current naming conventions and modern systemic storm monitoring were not in place at the time). We got to T in 1995. That year, the R tropical system (Roxanne) formed on October 7. It is now September 18. Stan, Tammy, Vince, and Wilma are the only names left on the list. Dr. Gray is predicting 5 names storms for September and 3 for October. We've already named five storms this month, so I'm thinking they've underestimated again. Hopefully, most of the remaining storms this season will do what Philippe appears to be doing and stay out to sea.