Oil forecasted to reach Florida Keys in 5-days, Miami in 10

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A new oil-spill tracking forecast, prepared by four experts relying on five computer models, says part of the slick from the Deepwater Horizon may reach the Florida Keys in five-to- six days and Miami just five days after that.

Those grim prospects are contained in preliminary results of new spill-tracking research [ slides 11-13, attached pdf ] e-mailed late last night to various officials including U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson. It was prepared on the Gulf of Mexico's loop current by experts at the University of South Florida College of Marine Science who sent their research out via e-mail.

Their forecast comes as a new round of congressional hearings are underway here into the cause of and response to the oil spill. One of those hearings will be at 2:30 p.m. today ( in SR 253 ) at the Senate Commerce Committee on which Nelson serves. The head of BP America will testify along with the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard.
“While I always hope for the best, this is looking like really out-of-control bad," Nelson said today, referring to the widening spill and the research by USF oceanography Professor Robert H. Weisberg, with Drs. Yonggang Liu and Lianyuan Zheng, and Professor Cuanmin Hu.

Weisberg's preliminary forecast says oil from the spill in the Gulf may reach Key West by Sunday or Monday; the middle Keys by Wednesday of next week; and, Miami a week from Friday. "The southern arm of the oil slick has already been entrained [in], or at least on the edge of, the Loop Current," a summary in the forecast states.

BP and the government previously estimated 5,000 gallons of oil were leaking from the wellhead and a broken pipe at the site of the sunken rig. But a short video clip BP released last week in response to public pressure quickly led some scientists to estimate the spill is much worse than thought.

As a result, Nelson and Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California lawmaker who heads the Senate's environment panel, asked BP yesterday to bring any additional video footage of the spill to the Commerce hearing this afternoon.

Also yesterday, an official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration complained to Nelson’s office that BP has been reluctant to pay the agency for flying P-3 Hurricane Hunter aircraft to drop tracking buoys in the loop current – a matter Nelson said his staff is looking into.