KATC StormTeam 3 Weather BLOG

After many partly to mostly cloudy overflights of the ongoing oil slick by the NASA Polar Orbiter today we got a clear shot and visual confirmation of the slick getting involved with the Florida Loop current in the East-Central Gulf of Mexico.   Today’s image shows a large plume that extends at least 75 miles (and appears about 5-10 miles wide) to the southeast of the main slick.  This was likely helped by shifting winds and currents in the Gulf.  Interestingly enough the main slick off the immediate Southeast Louisiana coast has expanded but not to such a great extent.  Some significant surface evaporation may be helping this but I defer to the experts in this area.  Up to 30% of the surface light sweet crude may be evaporating however.  Unfortunately this image is just a 2 dimensional representation of the slick with recent findings showing sub-surface plumes extending hundreds of feet down and miles wide/thick so the true representation of the slick has yet to be fully visualized.