Buried in an article on Gulf of Mexico scenarios and predictions, Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post quotes Matthew Simmons, founder and chairman emeritus of Simmons & Company International.
In response to a tropical storm brewing in the Caribbean, Simmons says: “We’re going to have to evacuate the gulf states. Can you imagine evacuating 20 million people?… This story is 80 times worse than I thought.”
The National Hurricane Center said today that a stormy region in the Caribbean will get organized and strengthen into a tropical storm. It has a 40 percent chance of becoming a tropical cyclone — in other words, a hurricane — in the next two days, an estimate that was at zero a few days ago. “Upper-level winds are expected to become more conducive for development of this system as it moves westward or west-northwestward around 10 mph over the next couple of days,” the NHC told the Baltimore Sun. “There is a medium chance (40 percent) of this system becoming a tropical cyclone during the next 48 hours.”
AccuWeather.com forecaster Joe Bastardi said steering winds could bring the storm into the Gulf of Mexico by early next week. Gulf waters are very warm, so that would not be good news, according to Bastardi. An AccuWeather.com illustration (above) depicts the storm pushing oil onshore
