The storm track of Alpha looks more central at this point. At least it did yesterday on CNN.

The water conditions at IMFL have traditionally been turbulent in the days before the race, but typically lay down on race day oddly enough. Hopefully that will be the case this year also.

Let's keep our fingers crossed.

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Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com

Yeah, I heard the expectation is it will go west. Even still, it could churn up some surf.
Actually, since the swim is my strongest event, the worse it is the better I'll do - relatively.

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Proud member of FISHTWITCH: doing a bit more than fish exercise now.

I think you mean Wilma. Alpha will be the next named storm - now that we used up all the regularly assigned names. Wilma seems to be moving toward the NW. If anything, it would make landfall somewhere about a week before IMFL. Right now, it's more in-line with NO than anything.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

shit...now I'm concerned!

Though it looks like like Wilma is headed west.

I'm more interested in the water temp. As a 'fish' i'd like to see a non-wetsuit swim, though I hear the water temps. will drop pretty fast in the next 18 days.

Let's not speak about this. Everything will be fine...

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The devil made me do it the first time, second time I done it on my own - W

I'm with you on non-wetsuit. How awesome would that be! I hate it when it is borderline - too hot for the wetsuit, but ya' gotta wear it 'cause everyone else will.

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Proud member of FISHTWITCH: doing a bit more than fish exercise now.

Oh, oops. I thought I heard Alpha on CNN. My bad.

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Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com

This season shows anything can happen during hurricane season.

However, storms usually track differently in middle-late fall than they do in July/August/September when you get trpocial weather slinging due north once they cross Cuba or the Yucatan Channel. Once you start getting cooler, drier air pushing down into the northern Gulf Coast, the troffs associated with the cooler dryer air normally serve as a barrier that keep the storm from making landfall on that part of the coastline, and instead either push the storm to the east or west.

And we're now finally starting to get the cooler drier middle-late fall weather- dew point was 46F when I got up this morning, and overnight lows in the high 50s if you're a little bit inland.

Current computer models for Wilma right now, are taking the storm west into the Yucatan, recurving it early and sending it to some place south of Tampa, or putting it into Mexico/Belize and then recurving it some place south of Tampa.

I heard on the radio this morning that this is the busiest storm season since 1933.

Wilma ties the record for the number of named storms. If we do have to move into the Greek letter names, we will have set a record.

Worry about a storm and do not even think about all the toxic waste being pumped out of New Orleans into the Gulf, which is probably drifting down towards Panama City Beach. At least most of the sharks should die before the race starts.

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"Remember: a bicycle is an elegant and efficient tool designed for seeking out and defeating people who aren't as good as you."

--BikeSnobNYC

Water quality is actually pretty good right now. The red tide seems to have cleared itself out along the coastline, and the dolphins I see out in the Gulf look really fat & happy.

Forget IMFL. This is going to impact the GFC a lot more!!! When did the path change so much. It was fine this morning! Check out the latest from NOAA:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at4+shtml/024602.shtml?5day

Yeah, that's a big change from what the pundits were saying this morning....though forecasting that large of a swing that far out seems very much conjecture aimed more at being alarmist than anything else. We shall see, obviously, and let's all hope that this thing dies quickly, regardless of what path it ends up taking.