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SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — El Salvador’s interior minister says the death toll is now 91 from floods and slides touched off by three days of heavy rains.

Minister Humberto Centeno says 60 people are still missing, and about 7,000 more are in shelters.

He told reporters Sunday that many towns are still cut off and officials have been unable to reach them.

The capital of San Salvador and central San Vicente province are the hardest-hit regions.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Forty people have died in El Salvador following three days of heavy rains, Interior Minister Humberto Centeno said Sunday.

Centeno told a news conference that the deaths happened in at least five of the 14 provinces of the mountainous Central American country, where it has been raining since Thursday.

Centeno said at least two dozen of the deaths happened in the central San Vicente province. He did not provide details.

Hurricane Ida passed through Nicaragua on Thursday, slamming the country’s Atlantic coast, and damaging or destroying about 500 homes, as well as roads and bridges.

The rains in El Salvador were caused by a low pressure system off the country’s Pacific coast, and while the presence of Ida in the Caribbean may have played some indirect role in helping steer the system, the deaths are not directly linked to the hurricane, said Dave Roberts, a Navy hurricane specialist at the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida.

“Because Ida is in the northwest Caribbean, there is a very large weakness in the steering currents in the middle levels of the atmosphere that’s making this thing move on shore near El Salvador from the eastern Pacific,” he said. “If there were deaths associated with this rainfall amount in El Salvador, I would not link it to Ida.”

Ida is a Category 1 hurricane with 90-mph (145-kph) winds and is passing close to Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

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Odds are 1 in 3 a hurricane will strike Florida in 2009, researchers say

By Robert Nolin | South Florida Sun-Sentinel

7:28 PM EDT, May 13, 2009

The 23rd annual Governors Hurricane Conference is held this week at the Broward County Convention Center. Here, Bill Read, director of the National Hurricane Center, addresses the audience Wednesday afternoon. (Robert Duyos, SunSentinel / May 13, 2009)

 

FORT LAUDERDALE – Two climatologists from Colorado State University, both scorned and respected for their hurricane season forecasts, took to the podium Wednesday to discuss their prediction for 2009: 12 named storms, six hurricanes, and two major hurricanes of Category 3 or worse.

“Basically, an average hurricane season,” Phil Klotzbach told attendees at the Governor’s Hurricane Conference being held at the Broward County Convention Center.

Klotzbach and colleague William Gray issue periodic prognostications before and during the six-month hurricane season, which begins June 1. Some years the pair’s forecasts have been spot-on; other seasons, their figures have skewed sharply from the actual number of tropical storms that developed.

According to Klotzback and Gray, Florida and the U.S. East Coast have less than a 1-in-3 chance, or 32 percent, of experiencing a hurricane landfall this year.

The odds are roughly similar — 31 percent — for the states along the Gulf of Mexico, and 54 percent for the entire U.S. coastline.

Klotzbach explained to conference attendees, mostly scientists and emergency management professionals, how he and Gray use “hindcasting,” the study of past weather activity, to predict the future.

“You don’t see the dartboard model,” he joked, pointing to a projected chart. “We do actually use science in our forecasts.”

The Colorado-based researchers examine ocean temperature, barometric pressure and wind shear to forceast the number and strength of the coming season’s storms.

Warmer water, for example, fuels stronger hurricanes. So far this year, Klotzbach said, the Atlantic Ocean’s temperature has been cooler than in decades. But he said it could warm up during storm season.

El Nino, a large atmospheric condition that affects weather patterns, can cause an increase in wind shear, which inhibits a storm’s intensity, Klotzbach said.

“We have a bit of a challenge ahead of us because we don’t know what El Nino will do,” he said.

Regardless of the overall seasonal prediction, the researchers urged Americans at risk to be prepared for a hurricane.

“If you have one storm and it comes over you, it’s a very active season,” Gray said.

Also Wednesday, Ruben Almaguer, Florida’s newly appointed interim emergency management director, introduced himself and outlined his priorities. Almaguer, deputy director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management since 2007, said he will continue the policies of his predecessor, Craig Fugate, who this week won approval as new director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“Nothing’s changing,” Almaguer said. “It’s business as usual.”

His plan for hurricane season: “Respond quickly and take care of our people.”

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Hurricane predictions gain ground

Forecasters believe they can do even better in coming years

By ERIC BERGER HOUSTON CHRONICLE

By steadily improving their forecasts and setting high expectations, hurricane scientists may be getting too good for their own good.

As Hurricane Ike crossed Cuba and approached the Texas coast, forecasts provided by the National Hurricane Center proved to be more accurate than the average set during the last five years.

Yet upon returning to Texas, the center’s director, Bill Read, says he hears all the time that Ike was a bad forecast.

Read, former meteorologist-in-charge of Houston’s National Weather Service office, heard it again at the recent National Hurricane Conference in Austin.

“That storm sure did a dance before it came ashore,” Gov. Rick Perry said.

Hurricanes, ultimately are the product of chaotic weather patterns, do dance. That researchers and computers have been able to make some sense of storms’ meanderings during the last few decades ranks as a significant scientific victory.

Despite the public perception of Ike’s forecast, the hurricane center set all-time records for every one of its track forecasts, from one-day to five-day predictions, in 2008.

The center has done better still in bringing down the average error in its four- and five-day forecasts, which first were made public in 2001.

Average errors are down

The first two years the Miami-based center made five-day forecasts, the average error exceeded 370 miles, or greater than the driving distance between Houston and New Orleans.

Last year the five-day forecast’s average error was just 192 miles.

“Models,” said Read, giving a one-word answer when asked why the hurricane center has steadily improved its forecast accuracy.

Read said our physical understanding of hurricanes, while not perfect, has improved our ability to model them. And ever more powerful supercomputers allow increasingly complex models to be run more quickly.

But it’s not just the models, said Sim Aberson, a research meteorologist for the government’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.

“It’s more experience from the human forecasters,” he said. “For the first couple of years we just didn’t have very much experience doing four- and five-day forecasts.”

The steady improvement in forecasting has some scientists like Aberson asking what the theoretical limits for track accuracy might be.

A study published a decade ago in Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics by Lance Leslie and others concluded the best forecast computers or humans could make was about 80 nautical miles for the average two-day forecast, and 120 nautical miles for the three-day forecast.

May even get better

But modern hurricane center forecasts are now approaching these average errors, and last year the European computer model substantially surpassed these limits for the Atlantic basin.

“I am not sure we know what the limits are right now,” said Fuqing Zhang, a professor of meteorology at Penn State University. “I think we will continue seeing improvements in track forecast, especially in extended range.”

Even if forecasters may be approaching the lower limits of forecasting at two and three days, the basic laws of physics suggest it is possible to make predictions at longer ranges than even today’s five-day forecast.

While chaos in the natural order erodes forecasts substantially over time, it’s reasonable that better computers eventually can help create seven- or nine-day forecasts that have some predictive skill.

To that end, Read said he plans for the hurricane center to eventually develop a seven-day forecast.

eric.berger@chron.com

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MDOT to use Twitter during hurricane season

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS • APRIL 15, 2009

JACKSON — Too busy fleeing from a hurricane to decide which evacuation route to take in Mississippi? You may want to check your cell phone or laptop for a tweet.

 

The Mississippi Department of Transportation will use the micro-blogging platform Twitter.com to relay information to evacuees during the upcoming hurricane season. Twitter allows users to post 140 characters that can be viewed by anyone with Internet access.

The tweets — Twitter posts — can be sent or received on either a computer or cell phone.

 

MDOT has created six separate Twitter feeds to provide route-specific traffic information to evacuees traveling on Interstates 10, 20, 55, 59 and U.S. Highways 49 and 98.

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Almost 36 million U.S. residents live in hurricane zones

> Posted by Ken Kaye on April 15, 2009 06:30 AM

Some interesting stats, courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau:

35.7 million: The number of people who live along the coast from North Carolina to Texas as of 2008. That’s about 12 percent of the nation’s population.

17.9 million: The number of people who live along Florida’s coast. Of these, 10.6 million live on the Atlantic side and 7.3 million live on the Gulf side.

10.2 million: The number of people who lived along the coast, from North Carolina to Texas, in 1950. That was about 7 percent of the nation’s population at the time.

311,853: The population of New Orleans in 2008, three years after Hurricane Katrina struck. The population before the hurricane: 455,056.

29,431: The population of Homestead at the time Hurricane Andrew struck in 1992. The city’s population 15 years later: 56,601.

180,155: The number of square miles in the coastal areas from North Carolina to Texas.

8: The number of Atlantic hurricanes that emerged in 2008. Of these, five were major and three (Dolly, Gustav and Ike) struck the U.S. coastline.

3: The number of large metropolitan cities on the coast from North Carolina to Texas areas – that also are among the nation’s 20 most populated. They include Houston (sixth), Miami-Fort Lauderdale (seventh) and Tampa-St. Pete (20th).

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Experts are calling for an average hurricane season in the U.S., with 12 named storms developing. Last year they called for a similar amount, and we got 16.

Forecasters Make 2009 Hurricane Predictions

BALTIMORE (WJZ) ―

The numbers are in and forecasters are predicting a less active hurricane season than last year.

Meteorologist Tim Williams reports two major research centers have posted their numbers for the 2009 season ahead.

In a little more than a month-and-a-half, the United States will brace itself for the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season.

Two major U.S. research centers are Colorado State University’s hurricane team and the team from North Carolina State.  This year, forecasters are expecting a busy, but average hurricane season.

Colorado State is calling for 12 named storms this year, with six of those becoming hurricanes.  Two could become major, which means Category 3 or higher.

N.C. State’s team says between 11 and 14 tropical storms could be named.  Six to eight of those could strengthen to hurricane force.  Both teams agree two could become major.

This forecast is closely watched by energy, commodities and insurance markets since a series of storms rolled through the Gulf of Mexico during the 2005 season.  That year produced Hurricane Katrina, and was the costliest for oil and gas fields in U.S. history.

N.C. State predicts a 40 percent chance of a major hurricane hitting the Gulf Coast .  Colorado State thinks the odds are lower at 31 percent, with a 32 percent chance that a hurricane could hit the East Coast.

Last year, hurricane forecasters called for a slightly more active season than average. Twelve named storms is average, but we got 16.

The hurricane season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.