Oil Reaches Loop Current

It’s official: After a computer model on Monday showed that oil in the Gulf of Mexico had probably entered the loop current, which flows into the Florida Keys and up the Eastern U.S. coast, satellite imagery confirms that this is the case. Analyzing satellite imagery from NASA, blogger Jeff Masters writes that “a substantial tongue of oil has moved southeast from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and entered the Gulf of Mexico's Loop Current.” Masters says that, once the oil enters the current, it will probably take 10 to 20 days for it to hit the Keys, though it could be as few as four or five days. This means it’s likely that the Keys will be the first beaches in Florida to see the oil.