That phrase has been uttered many times before.
It applies to the Gulf of Mexico too.
What could dilute tens of millions of gallons of oil in the Gulf?
A worse-than-expected hurricane season?
http://www.reflector.com/state-news/oil-complicates-forecasts-hurricane-season-eve-36561Lots of negative scenarios outlined in that article, but there's also this interesting possibility:
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The lone precedent, experts agree, is the summer of 1979, when storms hampered efforts to contain a spill from a Mexican rig called Ixtoc 1 that eventually dumped 140 million gallons off the Yucatan Peninsula. Hurricane Henri, a Category 1 storm, damaged a 310-ton steel cap designed to stop the leak that would become the worst peacetime spill in history.
Still, while oil from that spill coated miles of beaches in Texas and Mexico, tropical storms and unseasonable cold fronts that year helped reverse offshore currents earlier than normal and drive oil away from the coast. Storms also helped disperse some of the oil, Bastardi said.
"That's what I think would happen this time," he said. "I'm sure a hurricane would do a great deal of diluting the oil, spreading it out where the concentrations would be much less damaging."
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Going to be an interesting summer... and not in good ways.
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