Good morning! Last week, I was telling you about the possibility of a weak cold front moving toward the northern Gulf of Mexico and the impact this might possibly have on the advancing Gulf oil slick. After several days of waffling back and forth, the models finally began to settle on the idea that there would be at least a brief, favorable wind shift for the Florida panhandle and this appears to be bearing out this morning (northerly wind is now moving into the Panhandle as I write this).
The top 3 images I've attached are, in order, surface wind at 8 AM today, 8 AM Tuesday, and 8 AM Wednesday. Notice how the arrows are directed away from the coastline through Tuesday morning, and then begin to push more toward the northwest and west by Wednesday. While this might not push all the oil out to sea, it should help ease the situation some for a couple of days. The issue the past few days has been the prolonged southwest flow which brought oil that was previously out 10-15 miles offshore toward the coast -- at the very least, this is changing.
As the wind begins to shift again more toward being from the southeast and east later this week, oil should get pushed back toward Alabama, MS and LA. The damage may already be done in the westernmost Panhandle (the wind might not ever be strong enough to push this oil completely back out into the Gulf), but the shift in the wind should stall any further eastward advancement of the oil along the Panhandle beaches.
Brian
