Good morning! If you just missed my weather segment a couple of minutes ago, I explained how we're going to be watching the wind direction carefully over the northern Gulf this weekend. A weak cold front will cross through the area Saturday and Sunday, with high pressure building in behind it. This should lead to a 24-48 hour period of first northwesterly, then northeasterly, wind over the northern Gulf before ultimately shifting back to the east after the weekend. In fact, if you look above at our Short Range Ensemble Forecast models (SREFs), they all essentially agree that the wind will be northerly for a time over the weekend. That potentially could bring parts of the oil slick closer to the Gulf loop current that we talked about yesterday.
If this were to happen, it would only take 4-6 days for some of the oil to reach the Florida Straits. As of right now, there appears to be enough of a separation between the oil slick and the current position of the loop current to preclude interaction between the two this weekend... but it is worth watching!
The top image is the Gulf surface wind at 2 PM on Saturday, the bottom is the same at 2 PM on Sunday (notice how the wind starts to shift back toward the east).
Brian
