The first recorded Category Five storm in the Arabian Sea, Tropical Cyclone Gonu, is barreling toward Oman and the Persian Gulf region. Check out the satellite views:

According to this tracking map, it’s expected to reach the coast of Oman late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, Eastern time. (Hat tip: Andrew Leyden.) So it looks like there will soon be more than one “surge” happening the Middle East.

What’s worse, Oman may not know what hit it: according to Global Surf News, “While tropical storms have hit Oman in the past, they are rare, and there is no record of a hurricane-strength cyclone striking the country. The last tropical storm to smack the nation was in June 1996.” Hopefully Gonu weakens a bit before making landfall!

There could be economic impacts, too. Dr. Jeff Masters writes, “Gonu is the strongest storm ever seen in the Arabian Sea, and could cause big trouble for the Persian Gulf oil rigs and tankers.”

Speaking of Dr. Masters, he’s jumped on the anti-Barry bandwagon — and I’m not talking about Barry Bonds, but rather the dearly departed Tropical Storm Barry, which formed on Friday (the opening day of hurricane season), soaked Florida, then winked out of official existence after a mere 24 hours. Masters writes, “Was Barry really a tropical storm? I think it should have been named ‘Subtropical Storm Barry’, and I hope NHC looks at the storm carefully to consider redesignating it after the season is over.” Margie Kieper is more emphatic:

Putting aside the unwelcome hype and “cry wolf” potential, maybe it’s best to just remember the ROFL moments associated with this chapter of the Atlantic 2007 hurricane season: that initial just-home-from-work oh-they-didn’t! moment when seeing the word “Barry” in the inbox (after which I generated a blog entry in record time — five minutes — then got on the phone with the equally-unbelieving Steve Gregory, where we hypered each other into a frenzy)…the comment by NWSFO Miami in their local discussion when Barry was named by NHC…the inability to provide Dvorak intensity estimates because there was nothing there except a LLCC (ok — that was hysterical — when has “shear” ever prevented Dvorak analysis, or, in the case of a subtropical cyclone, H-P technique)…just pick your favorite. Maybe NHC will quietly change it to subtropical in the post-season analysis.

Just to clarify, my take on Barry was that it tried to become tropical — obs showed that, although they also showed the extratropical nature of the disturbance — but there wasn’t persistent convection near the center, so it never developed, and did not fit the NHC definition of a TC. …

[I]s the situation with the generate-fear-and-hype media so out of control, that Barry was named, rather than risk some kind of media backlash, because no one believes that Florida residents can handle some minor coastal flooding, significant rain, and 25 mph winds, without framing it as a tropical storm? Or is it that no one thought they would prepare adequately unless it was called a tropical storm? Too bad for those who really did think they experienced one, because those folks will be caught unprepared when the genuine article shows up.

Alan Sullivan agrees: “[T]his was a marginal call for designation, following the even more marginal call last month. NHC has turned into a bunch of drama queens. There was a hybrid storm in the Gulf on day one of the official season, and it just had to get a name.”

LATER UPDATES ON GONU: here, here, here and here.