A fresh round of government and private hurricane forecasts show Tropical Storm Gustav, which is now heading west between Jamaica and Cuba, growing into a dangerous hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend and hitting the Gulf Coast around Labor Day. It’s still early, and the “error cone” in the forecasts means the storm could hit anywhere from easternmost Texas to Florida’s west coast. But most of the simulations compiled hour by hour on the hurricane-analysis Web page of Kerry Emanuel at M.I.T. show the landfall zone ranging from New Orleans to Tallahassee, Fla.

The video above provides a view of one simulation generated on Aug. 27 by the HWRF model, developed by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction and National Weather Service. Brian D. McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State, provided the images and is keeping track. This path is just one of many possible outcomes, and vagaries in winds and water temperatures will most likely take the storm somewhere else. But it certainly provides a wake-up call for a region that has been largely out of harm’s way the last couple of years.

And if the storm does stay on track, it will hit around the same time that the Republican National Convention begins in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Could a landfall by Hurricane Gustav revive nagging questions related to the federal response to Hurricane Katrina?

Hurricane Gustav Track Video