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Puzzling Electric Hurricanes
SpaceAdmiral writes "Hurricanes seldom have lightning because they primarily consist of horizontal winds (as opposed to vertical winds). However, three of the biggest storms of 2005 (Rita, Katrina, and Emily) had plenty of lightning and NASA has an interesting write-up about it." Bottom line is "we still have a lot to learn about hurricanes."
btw, keep away from my rat farm
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"Bottom line is "we still have a lot to learn about hurricanes.""
Bottom line: we have a lot to learn about a great deal.
i hate it when they basicly say " we know nothing " after every sience articly i read on ... but do we have to be reminded of it every time ?
the web. I mean ok we get it we humans know nothing
Julien. http://free.hostdepartment.com/8/81fortune/
Never got home to Kansas?
Anyway, I was wondering: could the static/friction-causing ingredient be all the fine dust they pick up combined with the enourmous speeds at the eye?
I don't know much of anything about the equipment they use, but could it just be that we're seeing more lightning because we're lookinging harder and with better equipment?
Judging by this picture, the moon looks just about the right size to plug the hole in this hurricane.
Wouldn't that stop it?
http://www.the-electric-universe.info/welcome.html
Burn baby, burn
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
All historically large and powerful storms.
Emily--Was another rare powerful July hurricane that formed in the Atlantic on the heels of Hurricane Dennis during the week of July 10th, 2005. The storm became the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the month of July after its winds reached a peak speed of 155 mph, and its minimum central pressure dropped to 929 mb, or 27.43 inches of Hg. This just surpassed the levels previously established by Dennis, and was just slightly below Category Five Hurricane intensity on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. Although Emily ransacked the island of Grenada, which was still recovering from Hurricane Ivan's impact in September, 2004, the storm mercifully spared the islands of Jamaica and the Caymans as well as weakened before making landfall in the Yucatan. The storm did regain some steam after losing its punch over the plateau of the Yucatan Peninsula, and made a final landfall as a major hurricane in Northeastern Mexico with winds of 125 mph. The storm was responsible for 64 deaths, and initially $300,000,000 dollars in damage. It also contributed to the rise in oil prices by forcing the evacuation of employees of Mexico's primary oil company, PEMEX, from their offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.
Hurricane Katrina--Started out modestly on August 23rd, 2005 in the Bahamas as a tropical wave that emerged from the remnants of a tropical depression that had been in the Caribbean. It gradually grew into the season's eleventh named storm and fourth hurricane prior to making landfall in South Florida as a minimal hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph, and gusts up to 95 mph. After quickly crossing Southern Florida, Katrina emerged again over water in the Southeastern Gulf of Mexico near the Florida Keys, and strengthened to the 2005 season's third major hurricane before reorganizing into the most powerful storm in the Central Gulf since Hurricane Camille, and third Category Five Hurricane in as many years with winds as high as 175 mph, and a minimum central pressure of 902 mb, or 26.64 inches of Hg. It became the fourth most powerful hurricane of all time ahead of Camille and behind Hurricane Gilbert (1988), the Labor Day of Hurricane of 1935, and Hurricane Allen (1980). After coming ashore as a Category One Hurricane in South Florida, Katrina struck two more times along the Gulf Coast. First in Buras, Louisiana with 140 mph winds, and then near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi with 135 mph winds. It created a 27 foot storm surge in Gulfport, Mississippi and a 22 foot storm surge in Bay St. Louis. Winds as high as 90 mph were felt as far east as Mobile, Alabama, which experienced its worst flooding in 90 years. To make matters worse, part of an oil rig broke away in Mobile Bay and hit a nearby causway possibly causing damage there. Waves as high as 48 feet happened offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. Some 50 people were killed in coastal Mississippi including 30 in an apartment complex in Biloxi. Katrina even ripped off part of the roof of the Louisiana Superdome, where 10,000 people were staying in the facility, which was being used as a shelter of last resort. Extensive flooding occurred in New Orleans, which was actually spared the brunt of the storm. The 9th ward in the Crescent City was underwater as well as 80 percent of the city. People fled to their attics to escape drowning and some were rescued by helicopters and boats. So far, the latest death toll is at 1,325 (Louisiana-1076, Mississippi-230, Florida-14, Alabama-2, Georgia-2, Tennessee-1) with damage estimates now ranging from $40 billion to $60 billion. Experts fear that the total cost for the storm could be $200 billion dollars, which would make Katrina the costliest hurricane and natural disaster in United States History.
Hurricane Rita--The seventeenth named storm and fifth major hurricane of the 2005 season, Rita began near the Turks and Caicos Islands as a mere tropical depression on September 17th, 2005. However, as it passed near the Florida Keys
They will never stop until somebody makes the
it just proves they were induced by the Conspiracy! /me loosens tinfoil hat a bit
Major storms, including severe Thunderstorms and Hurricanes are an oddity in atmospheric conditions specifically because there is vertical movement. Normally the atmosphere is in hydrostatic balance and the vertical speed of an air parcel can be ignored. In a thunderstorm there are severe downdrafts that overpower the pressure gradient force and updrafts stronger than the force of gravity. It's only in severe storms when the atmosphere isn't in hydrostatic balance. Hurricanes couldn't develop without vertical movement; the eye in the center is a result of the surface low "pulling" air from the upper atmosphere down and clearing the clouds; the bands are similar downdrafts with updrafts occurring at the eye wall. There's more to the lack of lightning than no movement.
"Generally there's not a lot of lightning in the eye-wall region," he says. "So when people see lightning there, they perk up -- they say, okay, something's happening."
incase the 100mph winds didn't have your attention already..
sigh.. hurricanes and their egos.
God is saying...
"You're screwing up my planet, I'm going to kick your ass now."
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
"Randy, my boy, those idiots have flown into the eye of the shitticane." - Lahey
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Thats just a glitch in the Bush anti black-people weather machine, a firmware update is expected soon, should fix everything.
What intrigues me most is how people have resisted the pun in these shocking new discoveries. Damnit, looks like I broke the trend.
If you must charge me with capital punishment for such a bad pun, might I suggest the electric chair?
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
I don't know how many of you may have watched the History channel show last night on the little ice age, but things like that just show us we don't know jack about the weather, how it's affected, and how it affects us. A massive volcano errupted in the early 1800s that cause "The year without a Summer" in 1816. So much ash, sulfer, and sulfuric acid in the air the sun's rays simply couldn't get to the earth. People freezing to death in August, snow on the ground in July, freshly shorn sheep froze to death in June.
Now, if you were to suggest that nobody looked before, I'd find that all too believable. It is truly amazing how much gets "discovered" very late on, because of poor observations and hyper-cynicism. (The plasmas that rise up above some storm clouds, when there is lightning, were "known about" a LONG time before they were officially "discovered", and have likely existed long before there was life capable of observing them. Skeptisism is important, but you can't be so skeptical that you won't look and so cynical that you won't listen. You'll never see much if you keep your eyes closed.)
Is hyper-cynicism possible here? Sure. Thunder isn't predicted by the standard model, so it is unlikely anybody would have gone looking and it's doubtful anyone who has observed lightning in a hurricane would have been believed. That's not to say that's what's happened - it could well be that this really is a staggeringly rare phenomina - but it's entirely believable that it did.
The observation planes may or may not have seen lightning (depends on where in the storm mass it occurs), but they should have heard it on the radio and seen it on the aircraft's magnetic compass. The clicks caused by lightning are trivial to identify, even if the lightning itself was completely obscured. Radio Hams should also have heard the distinct sounds of approaching lightning. If any of these people kept recordings (unlikely, but possible) then it would be fairly trivial work to go through those and determine just how common lightning in a hurricane is.
Now to convince NASA to not just be humble, but to actually do this kind of research that could really already have been done.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
...beating out even such classics as "would you drive any better with that cellphone shoved up your ass?" is "Nature Bats Last". It's an axiom that we would do well to remember as we prepare our latest and greatest assaults upon our environment.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Being a person who went through Katrina and the aftermath. I didnt see any lightning during Katrina (waiting for the storm included) at all and no evidence of lightning strikes in the lightly hit areas. (the harder hit areas weren't there anymore, so I couldnt judge)
Bottom line is "we still have a lot to learn about hurricanes."
Reminds me of Tom Tucker from Family guy:
"And coming up next, can bees think? A new study confirms that, no, no they cannot."
Next!
Lets just add some conspiracy to this...
Some of my friends in Florida noticed some odd 'humming' from the MacDill AFB during the storms of the last two seasons.
In a few documentaries, non-conspiracy type, there were mentions of HAARP being used to steer storms away from high value locations (such as MacDill AFB, home of SOCOM).
HAARP is widely known to be Tesla's work. Tesla was well known for things that go zap.
The government has interesting military busdget info (PDF warning)
Bumping a storm away from valuable places such as MacDill, and letting it damage some oil stuff is worth while. It runs the price of oil up, and the damaged oil equipment can be replaced. Of course, a few people may get hurt, but that's not the government's concern.
I'm sure NASA won't be informed of the actions at HAARP, so they'll be investigating something where they will never receive the details of how it happened.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
My girlfriend suggests that it was just the hurrican's PMSing, I am inclined to agree given the severity of the storms.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
It was a dusty summer in the Atlantic, though. Dry Sahara dust prevented the formation of 2-3 tropical storms. We normally think that stronger hurricanes saturate the dust and cause it to "go away". What if the dust got entrained in the system and caused additional friction to occur at high speeds, in spite of the extremely high water vapor values?
Another theory — did the strength of the storm increase conductivity within the eye? (Is it comparatively easier for lightning to occur in a dry environment as it would a wet one?)
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
I mean ok we get it we humans know nothing ... but do we have to be reminded of it every time ?
Yes.
My page.
The same day that Katrina was nearing Louisiana, I got a picture of lightning from a feeder band in Jacksonville, Florida -- over 500 miles away. The picture was shot with a Canon Powershot S2 (albeit in video mode -- I cheated by extracting the single frame that had lightning).
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
I was in homestead, florida (just moved here from southern california this year) when katrina hit. The eye passed within 12 miles of us. I recall the lightning too because it was really eerie heat-lightning style flashes in a strobe like effect and i remember saying to myself, hurricanes aren't supposed to have lightning. After that the transformers all over the neighborhood started detonating and lighting up the sky with blue explosions and all the power went out. I was able to this all because everyone thought (due to bad predictions) that it was only going to hit as a tropical storm and no one put up their shutters. I remember looking out across the pitch blackness and seeing a faint glow on the horizon and knowing that someone somewhere out there had power. I will always remember the experiences of katrina and wilma... and get to experience them all over again NEXT YEAR =)
Anyways if you'd like to take a look at some of my shots from katrina (mostly a rain event) and the resultant flooding look here: http://www.cixel.com/photo/thumbnails.php?album=3
Also if you'd like to see some of my shots of hurricane wilma (mostly a wind event) and scads of damage look here: http://www.cixel.com/photo/thumbnails.php?album=9
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
That's because your eyes don't see electromagnetic radiation and you weren't in all parts of the storm during all parts of its lifecycle.
The *special* hell.
How about state sponsored scientific atheism as official policy? History? Soviet Union, Stalin? I'd say that counts as abuse, based on what passed for science then. How about current "scientific" pharmco practices, tied in with government so called oversight bureaucracies? Any abuse there? How about psychological "re education" camps? Forced drugging accompanied by brainwashing of children in public schools, curerently a popular "scientific" past time? How about in academia, any abuse noted where grant money is involved? How about in the "scientific" high tech industry, any abuse there with sweatshops, pollution, racketeering, industrial collusion, bribery, blackmail? Biology? See recent south korean cloning scandal. Government abuse of scientific tech? Citizen, your papers please, to compare to our extensive data mining records and DNA samples. No need to step to a line to get your picture taken, just smile anywhere, you are on scientific candid camera.
I could go on but I think you can get the picture. Pick a "science" and you can find plenty of examples of good people and scoundrels, good practices and bad, useful products and heinous and harmful, or just plain bad products, exactly the same where the rubber meets the road as "religion". It's not all "good", not by a long shot, just because it's called "science"..
big hint: "scientists" and "engineers" are humans and as such are just as much liars, crooks, thieves and murderers, druggies, drunks, incompetents, etc as anyone else, and their "product" contains as much snakeoil now as it ever has contained, going back as far as anyone might want to look, and it is just as much abusive of humans as it is helpful. For every medical advance that actually works we have ten new ways to kill people in horribly painful ways. For every new outstanding miracle material we have ten new forms of pollution that will be mostly ignored..
"Science" just has todays version of "new shiny" slapped on it, when in historical over-view practice it has the same track record as any other cult activity. When the time frame is "now", adherents turn to being apologists and have a terrible time admitting to the frauds and failures, and revisionism and changing the subject and pointing at "the other guy" is the common norm.
Now back to the regularly scheduled group think
For example, Big Bang cosmology dominates science and dictates a lot of our decisions one way or another, yet relies upon many unproven (in some cases disprovable, such as the matter of the highly redshifted quasar sitting between us and NGC 7319 in Stephan's Quintet [innermost of the pair at 3 o'clock]) assumptions.
There are also a number of Islamic scientists from a millennium ago (plus or minus) and Greeks from a couple of millennia ago who would be somewhat put out by your assertion that science as we know it is somehow new. They were probably a bit short on linear accelerators, electron microscopes and compute farms, but the principles were all there. I'm sure that if I was a better historian or archaeologist I could flood you with more examples, but I think two is enough to make the point.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
NASA has an interesting write-up about it." Bottom line is "we still have a lot to learn about hurricanes."
C'mon NASA. As part of the government, I'm sure you're in the know about what's really going on.
your eyes don't see electromagnetic radiation
[pedantic]outside 400 and 700 nanometers [/pedantic] and...
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
and weather in general- http://www.weatherwars.info/index.html I lived in Florida, and experienced charley and wilma up close and personal, and caught the edges of a few others since 2003. Sites like the above ... well, they are food for thought...
I got a large majority of it, trust me. Since my last post I've asked people from various areas about their experiences. No one remembers even any thunder. Where I was before landfall, there were quite a few tornados running around; I remember hearing the sirens blaring in midtown as I was driving home from work (idiot GM didnt think the hurricane was going to be much)
Reading radiation in a storm... is that different from ACTUAL lightning strikes? Because we got a LARGE part of the storm; and I was awake through the whole thing. Drank coffee and ate pretzels on the front porch at one point too; watching trees falling and covering the road. Nothing but a loud roar coupled with walls of rain impacting everything from the woods we lived around to the brick walls of the garage.
"Christianity does not require nor imply knowledge of anything except that Jesus is Lord."
Oh, really? Is Jesus a six foot tall talking duck? Is "Lord" the title of the main hamburger chef for a chain of Swedish restaurants?
"Jesus is Lord" is incomprehensible without knowledge of who Jesus was and what he said. If he's the Son of God sent to save us from our sins and lead us to the truth, then there's a whole bunch of stuff that he said is true and which is therefore claimed by Christianity as truth.
One of the things he said was "Do not suppose that I came to annul the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to abolish but to complete them; for I assure you, while heaven and earth endure not one iota or one projection of a letter will be dropped from the Law until all is accomplished." Matthew 5:17, 18
That ties in the Torah. Educated Christianity therefore implies knowledge of a great deal beyond merely Jesus being Lord. Ignorant Christianity may not, but then ignorance of any doctrine will not imply knowledge.
The household dog, more than anything else shows that eugenics does work, and that we definitly cannot trust humans to perform it on our species.
Hurricane Katrina had tropical storm-strength winds extending 200 mi from center and hurricane-force winds extending 100mi at landfall, so you would have sampled a very tiny part of the storm. I'm guessing sound wouldn't carry very well with all that wind, so that accounts for the lack of thunder.
artificial ionospheric heating
Trust me, everyone that experiences both (a) a hurricane and (b) a Florida tropical thunderstorm--which is to say, most of the population of the state--is immediately aware of absence of thunder and lightning in hurricanes. You don't need scientific instruments to identify the presence or absence of a phenomenon that causes the family dog (and the occasional owner) to run and hide under the bed almost every summer afternoon, quivering from the sound of thunderclaps.
It's well known folk wisdom that hurricanes usually don't produce lightning. The fact that these three did is what makes it interesting.
(c.f. the rarity of lightning in snowstorms--a.k.a. thundersnow.)
Red rain, tidal waves, earthquakes, electric hurricanes, tornadoes where none have been seen before and a biblical crusading war in the middle east that is being conducted by the Antichrist! The end of the world is coming!!!
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
It's all George Bush's fault
Most NORMAL hurricanes don't have lightning. But, these weren't normal hurricanes. These hurricanes were created by the Bush Administration and their super-secret hurricane-creating weapon of mass destruction! Everyone knows that. They knew that a couple of devastating hurricanes in oil country would boost their profits, especially since Dick Cheney owns a whopping ZERO shares of Halliburton.
I got a large majority of it, trust me
Amazing! Judging from this picture, and the fact that the storm did not exist in one point of time but many, combined with your statement that you got "a large majority of it", we can only conclude that you must be an near-omnipresent deity which manifested over a region from the eastern Carribean though the Gulf of Mexico and up into the central and eastern US over a period of several weeks, and that you must be several hundred thousand square miles in area on average.
Well, I for one welcome our new hurricane-sized demigod overlords! Let me assure you that I, as a loyal Slashdot poster, can be useful in rounding up others to toil in your heavenly prayer-towers.
The *special* hell.
A colder stratosphere in 1998 and 2005 (relative to the warmer troposphere in the active months) allowed greater cooling of ice in the eyes of major hurricanes. Whenever the up flows of ice hit the down flows of ice falling from partially collapsed eyes it produced lightning.
h tml
c trichurricanes.htm?list749825
http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/MSU/hl_temp_glbave.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/09jan_ele
I predict the 2006 summer temperature anomaly differences between the global troposphere and stratosphere temperatures will remain high yielding a troposphere which is over 1 degree Celsius warmer than the stratosphere on average, to produce additional major hurricanes with lightening.
Temp_tropos_1998 = +.65 degrees C
Temp_strato_1998 = -.40 degrees C
delta_1998 = 1.05 degrees C
Temp_tropos_2005 = +.30 degrees C
Temp_strato_2005 = -.75 degrees C
delta_2005 = 1.05 degrees C
Prediction:
Temp_tropos_2006 = +.40 degrees C
Temp_strato_2006 = -.65 degrees C
delta_2006 = 1.05 degrees C