Hurricane Bill will threaten Haiti this week

UPDATE Tue 8:15 PM ...BILL BECOMES A MAJOR HURRICANE - TURNING WNW...

REPORTS FROM A NOAA HURRICANE HUNTER PLANE INDICATE THAT BILL HAS STRENGTHENED AND MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS HAVE INCREASED TO NEAR 125 MPH...205 KM/HR. BILL A CATEGORY 3 HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR/SIMPSON HURRICANE SCALE.

A COMPLETE ADVISORY WILL BE ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER

END UPDATE Tue 8:15 PM

NOAA image of Hurricane Bill - click image above for full size - 452 KB

Haiti Action.net - Port au Prince, Haiti - Mon 8:15 AM —The fast movingHurricane BILL could make its closest approach to Haiti as soon as Thursday night according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami (NHC). The outer bands of Tropical Depression ANA have already reached the Dominican Republic.. The NHC is forecasting Ana to travel NW over the Island emerging over water again close to the northern border. Currently, ANA is moving forward at a fairly quick 28 mph which would minimize flooding and landslides.

Just the same TD ANA will saturate the island just ahead of Hurricane BILL. Even though the NHC is currently forecasting that the center of a Category Two BILL will pass 200 miles to the north this Thursday and Friday, it is also just as likely that BILL could follow directly behind Ana, taking a more westerly route wandering on top of Port au Prince. Currently, Hurricane BILL is traveling almost directly over the Mid-Atlantic NOAA weather buoy and the NHC is hoping to get a good assessment of the storm from the data. BILL has not developed a well defined eye yet and there is some dicussion of how much more the storm can develop.

UN Envoy Bill Clinton has made numerous pronouncements about the effectiveness of economic aid and hurricane "relief," but the effectiveness of the 9,000 UN occupation forces — MINUSTAH — in assisting the People of Haiti will hurricane preparedness ahead of the storms has been negligible, at best. Any aid funds are funneled through the questionable agenda of USAID to ineffective NGOs instead of directly to the Government of Haiti which has the responsibility of proactive civil defense.

This paternalistic approach is particularly painful this week where a Swiss court has decided that the stolen funds — 7 million Swiss francs — seized from Haiti's former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier will be awarded to NGOs and "aid" organizations instead of to the Government of Haiti.

The NHC is forecasting that ANA could dump as much as 6 inches of rain on the landslide-prone mountains in the north. Civil defense teams should hasten preparations for flooding in the Artibonite ahead of ANA and BILL. NOAA is sending a reconnaissance aircraft into ANA this afternoon. It's possible that ANA could slow its forward progress somewhat and strengthen to a tropical storm north of Haiti when it reaches open water.

BILL could become a major hurricane — above Category Three — within three days. There is a tropical wave in the eastern Atlantic that could form into another tropical cyclone soon and become Tropical Storm Danny once it passes a sustained strength of 39 mph. The 2009 hurricane season is aready developing into a later repeat of last year where three major hurricanes and tropical storms — Gustav, Hanna and Ike — devastated the country. Gonaïves has yet to recover from the deadly Tropical Storm Jeanne that is thought to have killed up to 6,000 Haitians and no foreign UN, NGO or USAID workers.

RAW

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Hurricane Bill will threaten Haiti this week Aug 17