THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 2, 1995 TAG: 9510020033
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE
STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
Opal likes New Orleans.
Or so it seemed over the weekend as forecasts continued to take the tropical storm toward the Big Easy - even though Opal has been slowly heading the wrong way.
``It's sitting and spinning, going nowhere fast,'' said Bill Keneely of The Weather Channel in Atlanta. ``But it looks like it's going to trudge very slowly northward with time.'' It also looks as if it'll be the season's ninth hurricane.
At 5 p.m. Sunday, Opal was about 135 miles west of Merida, Mexico, with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph. The storm moved little Sunday, heading southwest just off the Yucatan Peninsula.
On Saturday, Opal moved off the north coast of the Yucatan into warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where it strengthened. At the time, it was almost due south of Louisiana; computer models had the storm making a beeline to New Orleans in 72 hours.
Instead, Opal lumbered southwest, moving 200 miles by Sunday.
Despite that, successive forecasts from the National Hurricane Center have continued to place the storm at New Orleans' doorstep.
Max Mayfield, a Hurricane Center meteorologist, said forecasters initially thought a low-pressure trough over the central United States would head south and snare Opal, pulling it northward.
Instead, the trough retreated northeast.
Then forecasters looked to another trough over the Pacific Northwest that was moving east Sunday. Again, the expectation is that Opal will get tangled in the trough and turn into the central Gulf of Mexico, ending up south of New Orleans by midweek.
And if it doesn't get hooked? ``It is very far south and there is nothing to pull it north,'' Keneely said. ``It could stay down (near the Bay of Campeche) for quite some time. There is a lot of uncertainty.''
Even though Opal's center was far away, clouds related to the storm reached Florida's west coast Sunday and were just south of Louisiana, where tides were running 2 to 3 feet above normal.
Residents of Grand Isle, La., were cautioned to move inland over the next few days.
The small community relies on a single causeway to the mainland.
A coastal flood watch was in effect from Bay St. Louis, Miss., west to Lake Charles, La., and for the entire Texas coast.
Wherever it goes, Opal is still expected to strengthen into the season's ninth hurricane, the Hurricane Center said.
If Opal does intensify and hit the mainland, it would be the third hurricane to make landfall this season.
Allison and Erin both hit Florida. Six other hurricanes remained in the Atlantic, half of them battering islands in the Eastern Caribbean. ILLUSTRATION: TRACKER'S GUIDE
Tropical Storm Noel
[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]
STEVE STONE/Staff
by CNB