Hmmmm....I work Friday to Tuesday (Security Canaport LNG)....my trips out onto the Jetty could get real interesting.......
http://www.canaportlng.com/gallery/main.php?cmd=album&var1=July2009/
This is interesting: Nova Scotia better batten down the hatches.
Hurricane Bill Packs ‘Dangerous’ Strength on Path to Canada
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By Brian K. Sullivan
Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) --
Hurricane Bill, already deemed a major storm, intensified over the Atlantic today and is forecast to plow toward Canada after passing between Bermuda and the U.S. East Coast.
Bill packed maximum sustained winds of 135 miles (217 kilometers) per hour, up from 125 mph earlier today, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in an advisory at about 11 a.m. Miami time. That makes Bill a Category 4 hurricane on the five- step
Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity, where a Category 3 storm, with winds of at least 111 mph, is considered major.
A weather front moving east across the U.S. will probably keep Bill away from the country’s eastern seaboard, said
Jim Rouiller, a senior energy meteorologist at Planalytics Inc. in Wayne, Pennsylvania.
“This is a very dangerous Category 4,” Rouiller said by telephone. “The East Coast is lucky.”
The first hurricane of the 2009 Atlantic season, Bill was centered about 380 miles east-northeast of the Caribbean’s Leeward Islands and heading west-northwest at 18 mph, with a gradual turn to the northwest forecast over the next two days. It was about 1,080 miles south-southeast of Bermuda.
The U.S. center’s five-day forecast shows Bill passing between Bermuda and the Carolinas as a major hurricane this weekend, before hitting Nova Scotia while still at hurricane strength on Aug. 24.
Canadian Refineries
Some refineries in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick may be at risk, including privately held
Irving Oil’s Saint John, New Brunswick, refinery, which processes about 300,000 barrels of oil a day, according to
Olivier Jakob, an analyst with research group Petromatrix GmbH in Zug, Switzerland.
Canadian authorities will likely start issuing bulletins on Bill tomorrow, said Peter Bowyer, a program supervisor for the
Canadian Hurricane Centre in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
“Atlantic Canada looks like it is under a longer-range threat,” Bowyer said. “Everyone in Atlantic Canada needs to be ready.”
There has never been a storm of Category 3 intensity or stronger to hit Canada since record-keeping began in 1851, Bowyer said.
While the U.S., Caribbean and Bermuda may escape a direct hit, they will still feel the effects of the storm, the U.S. hurricane center said.
“Large swells associated with Bill will be impacting the islands of the northeast Caribbean Sea during the next day or two,” the center said. “Large swells associated with Bill should also begin to affect Bermuda and portions of the eastern coast” of the U.S. by the day after tomorrow, it said.
Hurricane-Force Winds
Hurricane-force winds stretch 80 miles from Bill’s eye, and tropical storm-force winds reach out 175 miles, according to the NHC.
Systems are named when they reach tropical-storm strength, with sustained winds of 39 mph, and they become
hurricanes when sustained winds are 74 mph.
The 2009 hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, got off to a quiet start before three named storms formed in a period of 48 hours Aug. 15 and 16. Tropical storms Ana and Claudette have since dissipated, though the remnants of Ana, currently over Cuba, still have a “low chance” of becoming a tropical cyclone again in the next two days, according to the center.
