Gary Archibald, Weathercaster

Hurricane Dean has been the biggest storm story of the Atlantic Hurricane season thus far. It goes without saying that it has head a tremendous impact on Island nations in the Caribbean, now (at that time of this posting) into Mexico. Thus far, a dozen people have been killed by this relentless and unconscious beast – one of Mother Nature’s curious, mysterious earthly powers that has no equal.

This is the tragedy of powerful tropical systems. As it approached Chetumal in the Yucatan Peninsula as a Category 5 storm, the wind gusts were clocked at 205 mph! Storm surge was in excess of 25 feet, possibly even approaching 35 or 40 feet. The heavy rains (10-20 inches over the Yucatan working west towards the Bay of Campeche over the next 24 hours) will cause devastating flooding in the region. Lives and property are at a continuing high risk.

And we are on the ground, at landfall, in the regions afflicted by this historic storm…our team of reporters – Matt Boettcher, Leslie Dodson, and the Today Show’s Al Roker – dove right into the storm literally. With their solid team of producers, camera operators, and tech staff, Matt and Al provided us today with live segments from Chetumal. They were right in the middle of it – as close as possible to the strongest and most violent hurricane force winds, as Dean made landfall at approximately 4:30am CDT (20-30 miles north of Chetumal itself).

Leslie, in preparation for a possible final landfall of Dean in the central Gulf of Mexico region – with southern Texas a very real possible target up until yesterday- provided us with live newscast about preparations for impact and the affect Dean could still have on the on-shore and off-shore vital domestic U.S. oil and gas operations, and the subsequent impact Dean could have on the economy.

In all this team of veteran reporters provided us and our valued viewers with the big picture if you will, what we needed to know about this storm in a highly informative and effective fashion.

Kudos to the team!

For more updates on Dean and other active weather events at home or abroad keep us tuned in at Weather Plus and via the web at www.weatherplus.com. Check out the link “Hurricane Central” to get the latest on all of your tropical weather!

GA