Very early Tuesday morning Hurricane Dean brought its most powerful winds onshore near the Mexico/Belize border. Winds 165mph making it the first landfalling Category 5 hurricane since Hurricane Andrew in 1992. We still haven’t gotten word from the most affected areas. As daylight arrives we should be getting in more pictures. It does appear that the tourist areas of Cancun and Cozumel may have been spared the worst of the weather, but some damage has been reported. Dean has weakend as of this post, now a Category 3 hurricane with 125 mph winds. It should re-emerge off the coast into the Bay of Campeche as a Category 2, then re-strengthen to Category 3 status prior to a second landfall along the Mexican coast near Veracruz early Wednesday morning.
The other disturbance near the Virgin Islands doesn’t look any more impressive than yesterday. It still might have a chance for development. Models that have found the wave take it toward the East Coast later this weekend. Still very unsure if it will develop, and if it does intensity forecasts are marginal at best.
High pressure will build along the northern Gulf Coast for the rest of the week. Except for a few showers today, the rest of the week should be hot and dry. Afternoon temps will run in the mid 90s, heat index should be around 105. A few afternoon storms return by the weekend, pushing the temps back to normal August values.