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The eighth tropical storm of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season could just as easily end up over Cuba, lead ponderous rainfall to citrus inhabitants in central Florida or drift northward toward South Carolina. It was not possible to say if the outbreak main eventually end up in the U.S. oil patch in the Gulf of Mexico, hurricane experts said.

"Unfortunately there is still considerable uncertainty with the forecast," said Jamie Rhome, a hurricane specialist at the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. "It's impossible to say that this system is going to do this or that."

The cyclone was tangled up in a middle to upper level low that was composition it difficult for Hanna to develop, and was likely to slow down in two days when it came over conditions of weak steering current that could make it meander.

Another trough would then swoop above the tropical storm, bringing with it considerable uncertainty as to the likely wind shear as Hanna drifted at hand the Bahamas. Wind shear — the difference in wind fare at different levels of the atmosphere — can move with violence storms apart.

"At the end of the forecast track the wind shear could allow up a bit," Rhome related.

None of the computer models used to predict storm tracks in truth. took Hanna into the southeastern United States at this point, Rhome said.

Some oil analysts reported on Friday that one of the myriad computer models available to forecasters had indicated that Hanna could eventually esteem landfall in succession the U.S. Gulf Coast near New Orleans where Hurricane Gustav was expected to tend hitherward ashore on Monday for the reason that a dangerous storm.

Those reports triggered concerns in energy markets of a potential one-two punch by Gustav and Hanna on some of the 4,000 Gulf of Mexico offshore platforms that engage a quarter of U.S. immature oil and 15 percent of its ingenuous gas.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed more than 100 oil rigs in 2005 when they roared through, causing oil prices to soar to then record highs. Katrina went forward to swamp New Orleans, kill 1,500 people on the U.S. Gulf Coast and cause $80 billion in indemnity.

Rhome said it was folly to highlight a single computer model, especially so far out. "It's a mistake, and often a grave one, to focus on a single model," he related.

The accuracy of cyclone forecasting has come a long custom since the days while entire fleets of Spanish galleons sank in unlooked for storms considered in the state of they carried South American gold and treasure upper part to Europe.

But even with the start of "hurricane hunter" flights in 1944 and the advent of satellite imagery in the 1960s, long-range forecasts are bending forward to enormous margins of error.

The National Hurricane Center estimates the average error in its footmark forecasts is within a little of 260 miles by day four and 345 miles by day five. The hurricane center does not project a storm's track beyond day five.

Intensity forecasts are on a level again intricate. The hurricane center calculates that the error in its forecasts for a tear's top sustained winds averages 23 miles by means of hour (37 km per twenty-fourth part of a day) per promised time.

The be unconsumed magistrate forecast for Hanna takes it in five days to minimal Category 1 hurricane strength with 80-mile-per-hour (130 km per hour) winds by next Friday.

It might then be somewhere off central Florida. But its potential position at that text also encompasses the southerly Bahamas, eastern Cuba, south Florida and South Carolina.

(Editing by Tom Brown)