Hurricane may hit near GOP convention

 Tallahassee, Fla. --
Tropical Storm Isaac may grow into a hurricane on a path toward the west coast of Florida, where the Republican Party holds its national convention next week.
The National Hurricane Center's tracking map shows the system crossing Haiti on Friday and striking Cuba before arriving at the Florida coast below Cape Coral on Monday. That's the opening day of the Tampa gathering at which Republicans are expected to nominate Mitt Romney as their presidential candidate.
"At this point the (margin of) error in our forecasts is so huge that it's very difficult to tell what the risks would be," said Jeff Masters, founder of Weather Underground in Ann Arbor, Mich. "We're not going to have an idea until Sunday at the earliest what kind of risk this poses to Tampa. It's quite the drama."
The center said Isaac may become a hurricane Thursday, return to tropical-storm level over Haiti and Cuba and then regain hurricane strength en route to Florida.
"We're paying extremely close attention to it," Florida's emergency management director, Bryan Koon, said in an interview Wednesday. "We anticipate there will be impact to the state next week. But exactly where and how much remains to be seen."
Offshore oil and gas platforms and rigs may begin to shut down in the next few days as the threat from Isaac is better determined, said Jim Rouiller, senior energy meteorologist at Planalytics Inc. in Berwyn, Pa. Florida Gov. Rick Scott urged residents to be prepared. Preliminary hearings scheduled to start Thursday in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, were postponed by an Army judge because of the storm threat.
"The worst-case scenario for Tampa is if the storm gets into the gulf and boomerangs back in toward Tampa Bay," said Alex Sosnowski, expert senior meteorologist for AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pa. "For a system to boomerang back in that like that is pretty rare."
Sosnowski cautioned that the storm is still several days away and may make landfall anywhere from eastern Florida to the Gulf Coast. If it hits eastern Florida, weather in Tampa may be hot and dry. If Isaac moves into the gulf, the city might be in for severe thunderstorms, gusty winds and drenching rain, he said.
"We think it's going to be in the general vicinity of Florida in the first part of next week when the Republican National Convention is going on," Sosnowski said.