Interesting Hurricane days ahead?

[Flatbutt1]

Current image from the east atlantic




Equatorial Africa is busy these days.

[VINMAN]

Looks like Hannas gonna spare us here in Joisey!

[Jim Richards]

HANNA's gonna give us some rain. How 'bout that IKE?

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by Flatbutt1

Current image from the east atlantic
Equatorial Africa is busy these days.

It's God trying to stop this election

[Rot 911]

I think we here in Missouri have received more rain from Gustav than they did in New Orleans. It has stalled out over us and has been raining for the last 24 hours with no let up.

[Jims5543]

My buddy owns a vacation home in the Bahamas that was wiped out by Floyd (BTW he had no insurance and paid to have it fixed himself - no aid) and he rebuilt it like a bunker.

I guess he gets to see how solid it is.

His house is on an island where the right arrow points and I am where the left arrow points, its looking like we are gonna get a glancing blow, especially if this is a Cat 4 we will see some terrible weather.

[Pazuzu]

Gustav gave us a slight breeze one afternoon, and a few pretty clouds.

Oh, and it tossed this lovely cold front down here, it's 15 degrees cooler this morning.

[The Gaijin]

Haitians, Cubans and others in the Caribbean getting SLAMMED and it simply does not make the news here.. I mean the weatherperson is showing the eye going over another country (a poor one, in fact) and the ONLY issue is how long will it take to hit the US and at what strength..

Then a CAT 1 hits the mainland US and it is like the end of the world..

[onewhippedpuppy]

You know AlGore is just creaming his pants over this.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Ike is crazy - how does something go from a tropical storm to a Cat IV in less than 18 hours?

There's a LOT of oceanic heat content this year, one reason the convection in these storms is so explosive this year. The things that will protect us are (1) steering currents and (2) shear. Hanna is sort of a non-issue because it's getting sheared apart. It won't amount to much. Josephine (way out in the Atlantic) is similarly getting sheared apart. That one probably won't be much of anything unless whatever's left of it by the time the shear lets up can re-organize. Ike is even supposed to encounter strong (30+ knot) shear in about 36 hours. I suspect even that storm is going to get torn apart by it.

If there's a storm that pops up in a low-shear environment though, watch out - those are the ones that are going to do major damage. Doesn't look like anytime soon in the Atlantic though - lots of ridges & troughs interacting around the periphery of the "typical" hurricane zone - meaning lots of shear and steering currents that are prone to doing weird things rather than just letting systems drift on the trade winds across the Atlantic into the coastal U.S.

[legion]

Gustav is over me right now.

We usually have a dry August and could use the rain.

The farmers aren't so happy as it is delaying the harvest.

[legion]

Wow, good article on Yahoo! News.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080904/us_time/whydisastersaregettingworse

It is tempting to look at the line-up of storms in the Atlantic (Hanna, Ike, Josephine) and, in the name of everything green, blame climate change for this state of affairs. But there is another inconvenient truth out there: We are getting more vulnerable to weather mostly because of where we live, not just how we live.

In recent decades, people around the world have moved en masse to big cities near water. The population of Miami-Dade County in Florida was about 150,000 in the 1930s, a decade fraught with severe hurricanes. Since then, the population of Miami-Dade County has rocketed 1,600% to 2,400,000.

So the same intensity hurricane today wreaks all sorts of havoc that wouldn't have occurred had human beings not migrated. (To see how your own coastal county has changed in population, check out this cool graphing tool from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)

If climate change is having an effect on the intensities of storms, it's not obvious in the historical weather data. And whatever effect it is having is much, much smaller than the effect of development along the coastlines. In fact, if you look at all storms from 1900 to 2005 and imagine we had today's populations on the coasts, as Roger Pielke, Jr., and his colleagues did in a 2008 Natural Hazards Review paper, you would see that the worst hurricane would have actually happened in 1926.

If it happened today, the Great Miami storm would have caused $140 to $157 billion in damages. (Hurricane Katrina, the costliest storm in U.S. history, caused $100 billion in losses.) "There has been no trend in the number or intensity of storms at landfall since 1900,"says Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado. "The storms themselves haven't changed."

What's changed is what we've put in the storm's way. Crowding together in coastal cities puts us at risk on a few levels. First, it is harder for us to evacuate before a storm because of gridlock. And in much of the developing world, people don't get the kinds of early warnings that Americans get. So large migrant populations - usually living in flimsy housing - get flooded out year after year. That helps explain why Asia has repeatedly been the hardest hit by disasters in recent years.

Secondly, even if we get all the humans to safety, we still have more stuff in harm's way. So each big hurricane costs more than the big one before it, even controlling for inflation.

But the most insidious effect of building condos and industry along the water is that we are systematically stripping the coasts of the protection that used to cushion the blow of extreme weather. Three years after Katrina, southern Louisiana is still losing a football field worth of wetlands every 38 minutes.
...
Before we become hopelessly lost in despair, however, there is good news: we can do something about this problem. We can enact meaningful building codes and stop keeping insurance premiums artificially low in flood zones.

But first we need to understand that disasters aren't just caused by FEMA and greenhouse gases. Says Tierney: "I don't think that people have an understanding of questions they should be asking - about where they live, about design and construction, about building inspection, fire protection. These just aren't things that are on people's minds."

[Jims5543]

I read the Johnathan Dickenson Journal from the 1700's. In it he is shipwrecked in a hurricane near Jupiter Florida and is trying to hike up to St. Augustine for help. Within 2 weeks of his shipwreck he is hit by another hurricane as he is making his way north.

Imagine that!! 2 Hurricanes back to back in the same place! Was there global warming back int he 1700's?

[onewhippedpuppy]

Was he driving a Hummer? I bet so.

[rammstein]

Ike is creepy. It was a TS when I left work yesterday. Now it is a Cat 4. Cat 3 was my arbitrary evacuation strength. But I dunno, I really don't want to leave. I live in a steel/concrete high-rise. It can't get THAT bad, can it?

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Originally Posted by rammstein

Ike is creepy. It was a TS when I left work yesterday. Now it is a Cat 4. Cat 3 was my arbitrary evacuation strength. But I dunno, I really don't want to leave. I live in a steel/concrete high-rise. It can't get THAT bad, can it?

Picture living there for a week with no way to leave 'cause the bottom floor is flooded to the ceiling and without any electricity and only whatever food/water you have on hand.

Still feel the same way?

High-rises are built very strong for lateral load (wind) resistance but that's not the issue with a hurricane (usually). It's the water.

[Jims5543]

Mark, looking at the computer models and the projected path I think Miami is safe, I think the Florida coast will get a glancing blow but not a direct hit.

I guess we will know better on Monday, have a great weekend o.k.!

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by Jims5543

Mark, looking at the computer models and the projected path I think Miami is safe, I think the Florida coast will get a glancing blow but not a direct hit.

Interesting...we're worried that it'll cross OVER the peninsula and rebuild in the Gulf...

[onewhippedpuppy]

Mike, are you an interested observer, or is this what you do for a living? Just curious.

[Jims5543]

Mike, I am no expert but it looks like it is going to follow in Hanna's wake just a tad further west.

Like I said on Monday I will know if I am dusting off my shutters, I have not had to put them up for 3 years now.