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."

Comments

Lightning? Not The Result of Global Warming

[ackthpt]

It's actually the aliens entering their war machines. See you in the sewers, mate!

btw, keep away from my rat farm

Re:Lightning? Not The Result of Global Warming

[bloo9298]

Aliens? That's silly. Don't worry, Pat Robertson will no doubt explain why the lightning occurred soon enough.

Modesty and Knowledge.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bottom line is "we still have a lot to learn about hurricanes.""

Bottom line: we have a lot to learn about a great deal.

Re:Modesty and Knowledge.

[Y2]

In other news: Scientists admit that they don't know everything.

Which wouldn't be noteworthy, except for the numerous other factions that make no such admission, ever.

Re:Modesty and Knowledge.

[Krach42]

Which wouldn't be noteworthy, except for the numerous other factions that make no such admission, ever.

http://bible.cc/1_corinthians/13-12.htm

I'd be quite careful with depicting religious belief as automatically and totally dictating truth.

Any system of control will naturally claim to have all the answers, and some of the general pulic tends to have a misunderstanding that science has all the answers.

In fact, science could be just as usable as a forced authoritarian doctrine to control a people as any religion. The mere fact that it hasn't been yet so abused is not indicative of a fundamental nature of science.

Re:Modesty and Knowledge.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Your theology is sophisticated and admirable; unfortunately, it's also not typical of the people who use religion as a blunt instrument to attack science -- and like it or not, there are a lot of those people, and they have significant political power.

Science could indeed be used as a doctrine of control, but if it were, it would of necessity be warped so far that it would no longer be "science" by any reasonable definition of the word. In fact, there are historical examples: Lysenkoism and Intelligent Design spring immediately to mind, and there are probably others. In order to function, um, scientifically, science requires freedom of both thought and action.

Re:Modesty and Knowledge.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Blindly asserting that anti-scientists must dictate claims of universal, absolute, and revealed truth.

Except I didn't say that; please notice the use of the phrase "tend to follow" in my original post.

In the same vein, Christianity in itself does not dictates absolute truth. There are a variety of Christianities out there, and fundamentally they agree on just a few points. There is a God, he had a son named Jesus who died to release us from our sins, and much of our most accepted foundations of faith are recorded in the Bible.

Just because some dictate authority from this position does not mean that all of them do.

Very true, and you'll notice that I never specified Christianity as the ideology in question. Again, please read what I actually wrote.

But I'm not trying to play coy here; obviously there are varieties of Christianity which do insist on their interpretation of the Bible as absolute truth, and I don't think it's a coincidence that people who believe this way tend to be profoundly anti-scientific. They caricature scientists as authoritarian because that's the way they think themselves; they honestly can't understand people who genuinely do not think the way they do. In their worldview, everyone has some kind of absolute faith, and if it's not God, it must be Science. Those are the only people I'm talking about here; unfortunately, as I said in my reply to another one of your posts, there are a lot of them.

Nor do I claim that Christians are the only ones who exhibit this behavior. Luddite hyper-environmentalists whose version of Absolute Truth is "The Environment" are just as bad; so are Randians who reject any government restrictions on industry even when industrial behavior presents a clear and present danger. Also, as I noted in my reply to your other post, Soviet Communism tended to rewrite science when it conflicted with their interpretation of Marx's Holy Writ -- I get the impression Chinese Communism is starting to grow out of this, but it's got a way to go yet.

In short, the problem isn't the ideology; it's the ideologues. The great advantage of science in relation to all the examples I mentioned above is that it's not an ideology at all, and thus ideologues -- the sort of people who need Something to believe in as The Truth, whatever that Something may be -- tend not to be attracted to it in the first place.

Re:Modesty and Knowledge.

[Eli Gottlieb]

If eugenics, the use of IQs to decide destinies, psychiatry, and endless studies on "what's good for you" aren't an abuse of science to control people, than what is?

I would be extremely suspicious when "science" makes any pronouncements related to human life or nature that call for a change in public policy. If it just cures a disease, then by all means do it, but if it creates diseases to cure it's another story.

Re:Modesty and Knowledge.

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Lest someone think you're referring to mainstream Christianity (as opposed to some radical groups):

"For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." -1 Corinthians 13:9-12.

Or verses 9-10 according to Eugene Peterson's version: "We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled."

"You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?' Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know." Job 42:3

"Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain." -Psalm 139:6

"The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge; the ears of the wise seek it out." -Proverbs 18:15. This implies that these people don't already have perfect knowledge!

Christianity does not require nor imply knowledge of anything except that Jesus is Lord.

Storms

[fireiceviperhotmail.]

i hate it when they basicly say " we know nothing " after every sience articly i read on
the web. I mean ok we get it we humans know nothing ... but do we have to be reminded of it every time ?

Julien. http://free.hostdepartment.com/8/81fortune/

Dorothy hit by lightning

[heavy snowfall]

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?

Re:Dorothy hit by lightning

[NitsujTPU]

I haven't watched The Wizard of Oz since I was compelled to do so in elementary school, but, I believe it was a Tornado that took Dorothy. Having been through both Hurricanes and Tornadoes, I can assure you that they're quite different.

Re:Dorothy hit by lightning

[Rei]

You don't need some revolutionary lightning-causing *method* (and in fact, that wouldn't really work - read below, and I'm sure you'll spot why).

In real thunderstorms, you have strong updrafts at high (cold) altitudes. You get several types of ice; among these are snow an graupel (ice pellets). Static between them creates small charge differences; the graupel tends to become negative and the snow positive. Were that all that was going on, that would be the end of the story, except that there's a sorting mechanism going on. The graupel is denser and falls down, while the snow is light and blows up. Now the charged particles are *very* far apart; discharges can't happen easily. So, charges build up, and up, and up, and eventually you get lightning. As the ground is more positive than the negative cloud bases, you can get cloud to ground lightning if the path is easier than the path up to the tops of the clous.

Basically, what this means in the context of these hurricanes is that there were strong updrafts in cold air (even though this is a tropical system) - probably extremely high altitudes.

Pardon my Ignorance

[killkillkill]

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?

Re:Pardon my Ignorance

[Anonymous Coward]

Bravo!

This is an important point that is sometimes forgotten when we study hurricanes. It's always amusing to hear news forcasters say that a certain hurricane is the most violent in 100 years or that it had some characteristic never seen before. How do they know? How do we know if Wilma was bigger than the Galveston hurricane when the Galveston hurricane was out to sea? Heck, how do we even know that the category system of hurricanes is related to energy? Katrina as a Cat 3 made Andrew as a Cat 4 look small. And Tropical Cyclone Tracy--a strong Cat 5--was barely 50 miles across. Then there is Tropical Cyclone Tip that was 1500 miles across. For some reason this seems to me to be like measuring the speed of a car by RPMs of the wheels without taking into account the circumference of the wheels--occasionally a tiny car with 3" tires looks likes its going Mach 3.

Re:Pardon my Ignorance

[windows]

The winds in any cyclone, tropical or otherwise, are driven by the pressure gradient force. Tropical Cyclone Tracy had a minimum central pressure of about 950 mb but because of its compact size, there was a very strong pressure gradient. Typhoon Tip, on the other hand, had a minimum central pressure of 870 mb, but was much larger. Neither size nor central pressure are the sole factor in determining the maximum wind speed in a cyclone; but when considered together along with the influence of friction at the surface, they do control the wind speed. Typically when meteorologists compare the strength of typical cyclones, they look at either the maximum sustained winds or the minimum central pressure. And both are perfectly valid ways of comparing the strength of tropical cyclones.

And for what it's worth, observations are far better today than they were in 1900 when the powerful hurricane hit Galveston. Many of our estimates of the strength of tropical cyclones at sea are based off satellite imagery, which of course did not exist in 1900. However, it is perfectly valid to say that Hurricane Wilma had the lowest minimum central pressure of any cyclone observed in the Atlantic. It is a fact that there has not been a lower minimum central pressure observed.

With regards to lightning, a great deal of tropical cyclones have been observed in the Atlantic and in other basins around the world. The use of hurricane hunter aircraft is nothing new. And the article is merely saying that the three systems mentioned had something different from other systems observed and that meteorologists don't know why. It never said that other tropical cyclones in the past didn't have significant lightning activity like these three. It just said we haven't observed it. And considering that meteorological records are kept rather carefully, we can be pretty confident that we haven't seen such behavior before.

Plug the hole?

[DaveM753]

Judging by this picture, the moon looks just about the right size to plug the hole in this hurricane.
Wouldn't that stop it?

Karma burning

[grasshoppa]

http://www.the-electric-universe.info/welcome.html

Burn baby, burn

historic in other areas as well

[bechthros]

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

But there is Vertical movement...

[JasperVal]

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.

Re:But there is Vertical movement...

[NewtonTwo]

Not quite. The atmosphere can be approximated by a hydrostatic balance only on large scales, this is a convenience of physics and math, not reality. IAAM and I assure you there's always vertical movement on some scale. When discussing it in the context of mesoscale severe weather, i.e. thunderstorms, tornados, the vertical scales of motion (updraft/downdraft) are similar in magnitude to the horizontal scales of motion (wind) and thus becomes significant. On the scale of hurricanes (as a whole) and synoptic cyclones, the vertical scale is insignificant compared to the horizontal scale and can be ignored in a mathematical sense.

The increased lightning observation indicates that there is some transfer of energy happening on the scales we have not been able to research yet. I look forward to some interesting research opportunities coming out of these observations.

PS:Please refrain from the pathetic falacies as well. Low pressure can not "pull".

Re:But there is Vertical movement...

[JasperVal]

Because a "pull" is an anthropomorphic emotion exhibited by the storm? If you're going to call it a fallacy at least point towards a more correct one. Notice I didn't say "the low pressure wanted the air pulled towards it to be happy." And needless to say, I thought the quotation marks around the original were telling enough I was speaking of the end result, not the mechanism. For the record IANAM, and bow to your superior knowledge. I was merely pointing out, as you just did, the thought that there was no vertical movement was ridiculous and there's something else going on. And yes, more research should be done.

Re:But there is Vertical movement...

[Mattintosh]

That page consists of pure pedantry. If you were a less scientifically-minded person, you'd understand things like "language" which has concepts like "simile", "metaphor", and "anthropomorphism", which are all used to "explain" "ideas" and "help people understand things better" and "communicate ideas". (My apologies to the late Chris Farley.)

The best one was: The atmosphere likes to absorb IR radiation so we have an imbalance. Yes. Yes it does. Perhaps you would prefer to replace "likes to absorb" with "has an affinity for absorbing" or "tends to absorb". And while those would be different, they wouldn't necessarily communicate the idea better.

People understand anthropomorphism, simile, and metaphor. Those things help them grasp new concepts (or even old ones) much more quickly than if you just presented facts in a boring, straightforward, and completely politically (and pedantically) correct way. So you introduce the ideas to them using something they're likely to make an emotional connection with (because like it or not, people have emotions), then you follow up with the boring facts. It's sort of a trojan horse thing. The human mind tends to reject boredom, but if you get "inside the gates", you can release the boring-fact trojans to bludgeon them into learning something of value.

Oh, and by the way: you triggered this with a completely invalid example. Gravity pulls. Low pressure pulls. Horses pull. Tractors pull. The word "pull" describes motion or the cause thereof, not intent.

hmm

[mistermicro]

"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.

Allow me to translate....

[Duncan3]

God is saying...

"You're screwing up my planet, I'm going to kick your ass now."

nah!

[odinboy71]

Thats just a glitch in the Bush anti black-people weather machine, a firmware update is expected soon, should fix everything.

Actually we have alot to learn about nature period

[scronline]

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.

Re:haarp

[ScrewMaster]

/me loosens tinfoil hat a bit

Forget the hat ... loosen your tie. A little oxygen will help.

HAARP?

[JWSmythe]

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.

PMS?

[DarkKnightRadick]

My girlfriend suggests that it was just the hurrican's PMSing, I am inclined to agree given the severity of the storms.

Katrina had lightning indeed

[Jon Abbott]

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).

Katrina certainly did have lightning

[CiXeL]

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

Re:Lightning? Not in Katrina

[Rei]

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.

Abuse?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Eugenics...

[Belial6]

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.