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When Did Irene Stop Being a Hurricane?
jamesl writes "Cliff Mass, a climate researcher at the University of Washington and popular Seattle blogger, asks, 'When did Irene stop being a hurricane? ... there is really no reliable evidence of hurricane-force winds at any time the storm was approaching North Carolina or moving up the East Coast. ... I took a look at all the observations over Virgina, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York. Not one National Weather Service or FAA observation location, not one buoy observations, none reach the requisite wind speed. Most were not even close. ... Surely, one of the observations upwind of landfall, over Cape Hatteras or one of the other barrier island locations, indicated hurricane-force sustained winds? Amazingly, the answer is still no.' Cliff supports his statement with data from NOAA/NWS/NDBC presented in easy to understand charts."
CNN had that fabu bar that was going bokers for 3 days straight! I know I saw lots of Hurricane force winds on that bar. Surely CNN wouldn't like???
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
Knowing when it wasn't a hurricane won't help those injured or killed, or fix the damage. Just someone interested in playing Monday Morning Quarterback....
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Yes, it was a Bad Storm. Nobody is going to deny that. However, the media's over-hype and over-coverage of the storm could have a serious "boy who cried wolf" effect. I would hate to see people woefully under-prepared if and when the next "Katrina" arrives, due to lack in confidence in media storm reporting and forecasting. We really don't need to instill a mindset of "it's not going to be as bad as they say it is" in hurricane prone areas. That kind of thinking costs lives, but is none the less engendered by ratings hungry news networks over-hyping relatively weak storms like Irene.
Does it matter at what altitude the wind speeds are measured? The buoys and measuring stations are at or near ground/sea level... while the aircraft are considerably higher. I remember a local forecaster stating that he was seeing 70mph winds less than a mile up near Raleigh.
The competiton for ratings causes news services to exaggerate negative stories. A promo like "Large storm, not many hurt" is unlikely to draw as many viewers as "Killer Hurricane on the Way".
The severity of the recent East Coast earthquake was also greately exaggerated.
It gained hurricane status when people actually latched on to their monster-of-the-week and started paying attention to the media's FUD about just-another-storm.
It lost hurricane status when people got bored with it. Which, not coincidentally, happened right around the time people realized that the storm had passed and nothing more interesting than a few downed trees and some localized flooding had accompanied the Grim Reaper on his end-of-summer ride through the heavens.
Yep, a few people died. Flooding will do that, and if doesn't take a hurricane to do that (how many hurricanes does the Midwest get each year?). Tragic, but at the same time, unimpressive - 35 people? Wow. The "storm of the century" caused about half the number of deaths of one interstate bus accident.
And now I note with some amusement, the media has started trolling for flu season already, with "remember bird/swine flu" retrospectives. Fucking pathetic. Let's all just turn it off, and walk away.
You're still on that? Haven't people explained to you already a million times the difference between weather and climate?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
When a storm is rotating counter-clockwise, the strongest wind will be on the right side of the storm. Because the storm as a whole is moving forward and on the right side, the forward-motion of the storm as a whole coincides with the direction of the rotation of the storm.
Now, as the storm was on the east-coast of the USA and moving north, the highest wind speed would be on the east of the eye of the storm - over the sea.
However, CNN mentioned at some point when the storm was over New York, that it was downgraded. I'm not sure where exactly the eye was at that point. So, it may or may not have been a hurricane. In any case, however it was nowhere near a historic storm. I mentioned as much in one of my blog posts.
And watch this hurricane! Oh boy it's gonna be historic!
Now keep watching... keep watching... keep watching...
It's the difference between epidemiology and medicine, or between actuarial predictions and fortune-telling. I might be able to predict that 10% of a population will get a disease, or that 0.054% of 43 year old females in North Dakota will break their left femur this year, without being able to tell you which individuals it will be. There's no reason to assume that large-scale predictions entail small-scale ones.
.sig withheld by request
Irene had pressure that low across N. Carolina and into Virginia. Still a strong storm. High winds spread out over wider area.
I was watching the reports at www.wunderground.com Tropical Weather page, and Dr. Jeff Masters blog there.
You mean one is something that can't be predicted accurately, and the other one is something that can't be predicted accurately even into the past when there are knowns?
Yeah. Million times difference.
Om, nomnomnom...
Ah! I see the problem, you're stupid!
And even if it was a hurricane at landfall, it's the first to hit the US in 3 years, which is unusual. Perhaps climate change is to blame for weakening our storms? Will this finally wake people up?
Glad to see others publicly noticing the wind speed discrepancies and general weakness of the storm.
Related to that is some local stations not only referred to it as a hurricane, but further stated that hurricane force winds extended out 125 miles from the eye when it was already very evident, even to many TV news reporters, some of who, that morning, on the air, characterized it as more akin to a Nor'Easter.
Makes some, including myself, wonder whether state and local governments, from pressure by the Feds, used the storm as a pretext to test shutting down entire mass transit systems and mass evacuations; not to see if it was possible, but what the public reaction would be, and the amount of compliance - reportedly, some local authorities, for people who refused to leave, were demanding them to provide their names and social security numbers.
Ron
Why? Of course it's an exact science. It has very exact language and as such I'm sure that the history of hurricanes in New York will lead them to the conclusion, that whatever changes happened to the climate in the 20th century, they prevented large hurricanes in New York.
There were four major Hurricanes cat 2-3 in the 19th century vs. just one major Hurricane in the 20th century (1938). The weaker storms like Irene are barely worth mentioning from an historic perspective.
Climate is the signal. Weather is the noise.
"It's an exact science! Everyone agrees on the conclusions
You must be off your rocker.
Geez, people assume we can predict everything [myway.com]. Weather prediction ain't an exact science.
Haven't you ever heard of margin of error? The National Hurricane Center publishes everything with error margins displayed right on a color chart... The hurricane fell well within their error bars. IIRC, it had a 10% chance reported for hurricane speed winds in South Jersey on Friday morning. Officials decided to evacuate based on that and the potential for flooding.
Climate scientists also have error bars - really, really wide ones that get even wider as you go into the more distant future. Thing is, everyone who has actually put the effort in to build a model in recent times comes away with the same conclusion - even their most conservative model still predicts anthropogenic warming.
Neither is an exact science. Some won't even credit either field with being a "science". But they do make fairly solid predictions within their stated margin of error more often than not. They give you your odds.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
When it was no longer convenient to describe it as such. Just like Pluto.
It's a terminological distinction that doesn't change the fact that it was a large, slow-moving, heavy-rain-dumping, storm-surge-generating, high-wind-generating tropical storm that ran along vulnerable, inhabited coastlines where people stupidly build their summer cottages directly on beaches where they will inevitably be trashed by such storms.
In other words, if he is right, BFD. Storm prediction isn't easy (it could also be MORE intense than predicted), and location matters a great deal along low-relief coasts. If it's driving slowly along the coast a storm will be particularly prone to generating strong storm surges that will eventually coincide with high tide, and those are often more damaging and life-threatening than the winds themselves.
Late summer weekend with a crap economy? Little was lost economically by the shutdown
If you read the forecast discussions religiously (as I did, being directly in the path), you'd have noticed that the forecasts reflected the extratropical transition and dissipation of the hurricane, as well as the fact that the main threat was flooding, not wind. You'd also have noticed that (for example) the forecasts put the chance of hurricane-force winds in New York City at something between 1 and 10 percent. Mass seems to be saying NOAA should have written forecasts to reflect the weakening and dissipation of the hurricane, and they did. But for some reason he criticizes their handling of it. Or maybe he's just criticizing the way the media, Mayor Bloomberg, etc. didn't seem to look at the up-to-the-minute and actually quite accurate forecasts, and instead just went "PANIC AND RUN FOR YOUR LIVES".
His data is very interesting, but without a baseline for comparison it's not decisive. What wind speeds should we expect to see measured by those buoys in the average Cat 1 hurricane? The buoys are quite widely spaced and could miss the zone of highest winds, or they could be too close to the sea surface (the wind speed used to determine the category of a storm is supposed to be measured at 10 m), etc.
So what are the error bars on climate change? 1% every 1000 years? 100 years? 10 years? Because if a hurricane has 10% error bars 2 days in the future, I'd hate to see how accurate our predictions are for 100 years in the future. Especially since we are predicting human changes, which not only are not constant, but we have no idea where the human race is going in terms of technology. Hell in 100 years, we may not use any fossil fuels at all with or without government intervention.
I'm still not sold on the global warming bandwagon. I'm not dismissing it, but call me a denier if you must. What I'm even less sold on is if global warming will be a catastrophe. In fact, what are the error bars on that? Is it possible that global warming will be a good thing for mankind?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
The answer is...
Well, now we're getting somewhere
Yes, exactly. Chemists claim they can "predict" the behavior of a gas to a reasonably high precision using the Ideal Gas Law (PV=nRT), even more precisely with the Van der Waals state equation, and there are more advanced models than that, but can they predict the motion of a single atom in the modeled gas volume? No. It's obviously all a sham and we know nothing about the behavior of gasses.
So what are the error bars on climate change? 1% every 1000 years? 100 years? 10 years? Because if a hurricane has 10% error bars 2 days in the future, I'd hate to see how accurate our predictions are for 100 years in the future.
For hurricanes? Nobody tries to predict that far in the future for them. Heck, even yearly predictions of hurricane numbers are just BS when it comes down to it.
They might be on the dot, but it's a bit like playing the lottery, sure you can get numbers right now and then but you haven't necessarily proven anything.
Especially since we are predicting human changes, which not only are not constant, but we have no idea where the human race is going in terms of technology. Hell in 100 years, we may not use any fossil fuels at all with or without government intervention.
I'm still not sold on the global warming bandwagon.
And you complain about other people's projections. You might as well suggest that aliens will come and wisk us off to heaven instead.
I'm not dismissing it, but call me a denier if you must. What I'm even less sold on is if global warming will be a catastrophe. In fact, what are the error bars on that? Is it possible that global warming will be a good thing for mankind?
If you're going to posit that, then it'll be up to you to research it. You'd certainly be disrupting the lives of billions of people, so you're going to have to look for a really good upside.
Technology Review has a good article about why the intensity predictions were so off:
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/27119/?p1=blogs
This was absolutely a hurricane as it came ashore and through Virginia. In the hours leading up to landfall, the western side weakened considerably. It was extremely lopsided. We were extremely fortunate that the hurricane speed winds, WHICH DID EXIST, were over the water and not over land.
I was in Virginia Beach and had to keep looking out my door wondering when this storm of the century was coming. My Sat TV and Power stayed on throughout this "Hurricane". Despite supposedly dropping almost 10 inches of rain.
I watched this storm closely. The bottom line is it was expected to strengthen before landfall. I recall seeing predictions of 130-135 mph winds. That didn't happen. In fact, Irene kind of fell apart on the way to the Carolina coast, so the devastating storm the news machine had hyped up simply never materialized. That's why there was so much news coverage. It WAS expected to be big. Why didn't they start reporting on Irene falling apart and saying "Whoops, my bad..."? I have no idea.
That is news.
Who is pushing this line? I noticed a concerted effort along these lines days before the storm even hit the US. What gives?
Regardless, from my amateur interpretation, the storm appears to have become a hybrid storm about the time it exited the Outer banks, with baroclinic venting, it's lack of temperature differential between the core and the surrounding environment, development of a subtropical storm like intense band, and a lifting of the wind-field, especially over land. It seemed to have become fully extra-tropical sometime during the third landfall at New York City, with what little core was left being replaced with a pair trough like bands and cooler/dryer air filtering in along the back-side of a cold front like band.
The hybrid ended up being a Cat 3 pressure and rain wise for a cat 1 wind price. The unexpectedly fortunate wind result won't help the people under water much, though. Although, I suspect it took some of the teeth out of the surge near the end.
When did Irene start being a hurricane? Looks like all the readings submitter found indicate it never was.
- Holy crap, I've got MOD points! Who thought that was a good idea.
No, but it might help to determine just WHY the storm was being hyped so much.
That's easy. Because NYC had a chance to be affected and that is where the news organizations are. Secondarily, no government official is going to take the chance of not reacting after the debacle that was Katrina. Anything that might affect NYC is apparently news - even when it isn't. When NYC gets weather that is rather typical where I live you'd think the world was coming to an end. I'm not looking forward to the day when a truly serious natural catastrophe affects NYC. We'll never hear the end of it.
It was a serious storm and needed to be taken seriously and it's probably better to over-react and be prepared than to brush it off. Nevertheless, the media attention was indeed a bit over the top.
It is a thought-provoking idea - "When" did Irene become a hurricane - and well worth my time to consider it. The US Geological Survey is an E-X-C-E-L-L-E-N-T source of information, and, in my humble opinion, criminally underfunded by our tax dollars (especially those companies that won't pay U.S. Taxes).
Use the following link inacoupladays
http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricanes/irene/coastal-change/updated-assessment.php
It screwed up my YARD!!!!!!!!
http://flyingmoose.com/uploads/irene.jpg
Just like New Yorkers get to giggle when those Southern folk shut down schools and stock pile supplies like survivalists because they got 2 feet of snow.
New Yorkers (the ones from NYC, not upstate) do that when there is 2 feet of snow. Southern folks shut down when there is 2 INCHES of snow.
Seriously, when I lived in a more southerly latitude, a quarter of an inch of snow would close every school within 15 miles of my house. They simply do not know how to deal rationally with significant amounts of snow. Where I grew up 1-2 feet within 24 hours was rather normal and I've seen as much as 72 inches in just three days. Despite that I didn't get a single snow day when I was in high school. Not one in four years.
The windspeed was not the source of damage, for the most part. The flooding was. It was not as bad as it could have been--the storm increased speed, so it was stationary for a shorter period of time and there was less rainfall than predicted--but it was still bad.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Of course, us in the south get shit when it snows/ ice. There's a lot more hills and turns than the grid-like planning of NYC. Not to mention the infrastructure to quickly remove or prevent ice on the road.
New York, quit making fun of us for freaking out over snow, and we'll stop making fun of you for surviving a "hurricane." We have BBQs in that weather.
Why didn't they start reporting on Irene falling apart and saying "Whoops, my bad..."? I have no idea.
Because that doesn't happen. Heck, you see it with newspapers all the time. Inaccurate story runs on page 1. Corrections are on page 27, right next to the obituaries.
Occasionally, you'll see television media run a story about how the hype never appeared and how, perhaps, they shouldn't hype things quite so much. They'll promise not to, but the next time it comes around, they'll be right back out there again.
The part that always makes me laugh are the intrepid reporters out in the middle of the storm telling people that they shouldn't be out in the middle of the storm. Well, then, why are you out there?
Here are a counter-argument from comments on the blog:
mike_s said...
They presumably use Doppler radar, which can measure speeds throughout the system, instead of relying on point sources, which can't.
Who predicted this? I looked at the NOAA advisories and the forecast advisory made on Friday morning shows a possible windspeed of 95 KT, and the forecast advisory made on Saturday morning at 5AM EDT shows a prediction of 80 KT wind.
I looked back on Thursday morning at 5AM EDT shows a prediction of 100 KT winds (115 MPH). Here is the relevant section of the forecast discussion on Thursday:
A Hurricane Hunter Aircraft Investigating Irene A Few Hours Ago Found That The Central Pressure Had Dropped To 950 Mb. However...Flight-Level And Sfmr-Observed Surface Wind Data Supported A Current Intensity Of No More Than 100 Kt...And This Is Probably Generous. It Is Presumed That The Intensification Process Was Halted By An Eyewall Replacement Event As Suggested By Microwave Imagery And Aircraft Observations. Since The Environment Appears To Be Conducive With Weak Shear...Warm Waters...And An Upper-Level Outflow Anticyclone Over The Hurricane...The Official Forecast Shows Re-Strengthening Within A Day Or So. After A Couple Of Days...The Ships Guidance Shows A Significant Increase In Vertical Shear...So A Steady Decrease In Intensity Is Likely. However...Since Irene Has Such A Large And Intense Circulation...It Will Probably Be Rather Slow To Weaken. Given The Limitations In Our Ability To Predict Intensity Change...There Is Significant Uncertainty As To Just How Strong Irene Will Be When It Nears The Eastern And Northeastern U.S. Coast.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
So what are the error bars on climate change? 1% every 1000 years? 100 years? 10 years?
I'm not sure what the state of the art is right now - only that it has gotten progressively tighter over time. In the 70s, the models were just as likely to predict cooling as they were warming. By the 90s, even the most conservative models started to track towards warming, and now there is broad consensus across all models AFAIK.
I'm still not sold on the global warming bandwagon. I'm not dismissing it, but call me a denier if you must.
It's fine to be skeptical. I was skeptical in the 90s when there wasn't a scientific consensus. But I'm just an engineer, not a climate scientist - I depend on the expertise of others. If everyone who has ever taken the time to build a model comes to the same conclusion, and the only detractors are in different fields and/or have some vested interest in being detractors... well, that's good enough for me. Not for you? That's fine, too.
What I'm even less sold on is if global warming will be a catastrophe. In fact, what are the error bars on that? Is it possible that global warming will be a good thing for mankind?
Well, change is rarely a good thing in the short term. Even if it did something amazing like flood the Sahara, it would create a lot of wars in the short term as people were displaced and fighting for resources. But I don't think anything can be done - people are like locusts. We will burn every last drop of oil and every last nugget of coal - it is inevitable. We really need to spend more time talking about mitigation. So even though we might disagree on root cause, we might have room to agree on mitigation :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I'm unsure why we should really care about what buoys floating in the ocean, directly at sea level, say about recorded wind speeds. Instead, I would consider what the radar indicated speeds were. The storm would not have been given a Category 1 rating without the requisite wind speeds being detected. I'll keep my tinfoil hat on the shelf for this one.
Here's some data Cliff Mass must have overlooked:
Here's a helpful map with data:
http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/at201109.asp
Here are the National Hurricane Center reports:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2011/refresh/IRENE+shtml/120913.shtml?
* Note the Wind Speed Probability reports
They also provide this:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at4+shtml/085722.shtml?swath
The Wikpedia article is well-footnoted:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hurricane_Irene
This is undeniably true, but it comes from a rational fear of ice, too
There's a lot more daytime melt-and-refreeze once you get south of Virginia.
In regard to your criticism [that it]:
Turned out that the winds barely kept up with the average winter storm on the Oregon Coast, at least according to their 'on location' wind speed reports that scrolled along.
Please explain how the windspeed of "the average winter storm on the Oregon Coast" has fuckall to do with the average windspeeds as experienced by the East Coast (and the regulations guiding the engineering of their infrastructure), along with how winterstorms -- which generally result in exhibiting snowfall -- has fuckall to do with the rainfall produced by summer storms.
Additionally, please discuss (with examples) tools that should have been used as a means of providing an accurate prediction of expected windspeeds: 48 hours, 36 hours, 24 hours, and 12 hours in advance of the storm making landfall.
Answers to essay questions may be provided in as many words as the student requires in order to answer the question with full intellectual honesty, along with proof that they're not an armchair, hind-sighted, fucking idiot.
They are dealing with the problem rationally...for them.
The occurrence of such a tiny amount of snow is so low for them that having to shut down is less costly than the investment in methods to deal with the problem in another way would be.
The rationality of a given response to a given situation depends a lot on circumstances.
You should give them more credit.
Just like New Yorkers get to giggle when those Southern folk shut down schools and stock pile supplies like survivalists because they got 2 feet of snow.
New Yorkers (the ones from NYC, not upstate) do that when there is 2 feet of snow. Southern folks shut down when there is 2 INCHES of snow.
Seriously, when I lived in a more southerly latitude, a quarter of an inch of snow would close every school within 15 miles of my house. They simply do not know how to deal rationally with significant amounts of snow. Where I grew up 1-2 feet within 24 hours was rather normal and I've seen as much as 72 inches in just three days. Despite that I didn't get a single snow day when I was in high school. Not one in four years.
It's not that they don't know how to cope, it's that they lack the equipment and the infrastructure to cope. In the South, there are many rural high-crown roads with ditches large enough to swallow a bus full of children when the roads are covered with just the thinnest amount of slippery white stuff. No one has snow chains, snow tires or snow shovels. Municipalities lack plows and sand/salt trucks. The last big snow storm here (Va Beach, VA) the Army Corps of Engineers had to use their road-building equipment to remove drifts that were only several feet high but beyond the capabilities of the local government's equipment to move. We have lot's of infrastructure for hurricanes, not so much for snow.
Here is the link to ORIN7 which shows winds hitting 70 knots and a central pressure of 28.50. Granted, the sustained winds show slightly below cat 1 at the surface, the winds were reported at 20 to 30% stronger at 1000 feet. And windspeed is not the only measure - central pressure is used too. 28.50 is on the border between cat 2 and 3. This storm was somewhat stillborn when it came to the winds.
Ha! Agreed. My favorite this time around was the reporter who went so far as to direct the camera at 3 young men crossing the street and calling them idiots on camera for doing exactly what he was doing, being out in a hurricane. Of course, they're quick to point out how they're "trained professionals". Come on guys, you're journalists. You're trained to ask questions and talk pretty. You're not swift water rescue or anything. Bonus points for the other guy who got right on top of the downed power lines and said that we shouldn't, and he was only doing it because he'd conferred with the power guys who assured him they were off. I bet trained power guys wouldn't screw around with downed power lines regardless of whether they were off or not unless they were actually fixing them.
People on the Internet should know better about finding reliable information. Informed experts, as opposed to sensationalist "journalists", were saying the issue was the sheer geographical size and what that implied for rainfall, not the intensity of the anticipated winds.
nothing more interesting than a few downed trees and some localized flooding
Your choice of media apparently isn't covering central Vermont and New Hampshire.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vermont-Flooding-2011/212455332141871?sk=photos
A bridge got taken out two towns over where the brook-like river rose over 30 feet. In a spring flood it might rise 5 feet.
Meteorologists might call it a hurricane or tropical storm based on an arbitrary delineation, but a Richter-like scale of effects would probably a better classification system.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
because it doesn't matter if the ice is 1 inch thick or 10 inches thick on the road....the car will still slide and lose traction. In the south, there are very few salt trucks and scrapers to clear the road. Hence the alarm at 2 INCHES of snow (which when is compacted, it makes shit slide).
And you complain about other people's projections. You might as well suggest that aliens will come and wisk us off to heaven instead.
Really? Suggesting we can migrate away from fossil fuels in 100 years is equivalent to aliens visiting earth? Think in 1911, when the Model T was the shiznit of cars. Did they know that there would be an explosion in vehicle traffic over the next century? Two breakthroughs could eliminate the vast majority of fossil fuel use extremely quickly. 1) Viable fusion power and 2) large capacity ultracapacitors. With both of those, electric would be plentiful and not produce any CO2 and pretty much every vehicle would be better off electric. In 100 years, I would hope we've made huge progress on both.
If you're going to posit that, then it'll be up to you to research it. You'd certainly be disrupting the lives of billions of people, so you're going to have to look for a really good upside.
I don't think you realize where we were 100 years ago. In 1911, there were approximately 1.6 billion people on the planet. Today there are close to 6.8. Billions of people are going to have their lives disrupted one way or another. Yes, we may lose some coastal territory, yes we may have more severe weather, yes the polar bears might die as the ice caps melt. On the upside, vast, truly vast, areas of land will be habitable that are today barren deserts. Think of Canada, think of Russia. Look at a globe and compare the land area near the equator with the land area near the poles. Ok, so we lost New Orleans, but we gained literally tens of millions of square miles. In addition to gaining land, there will be more fresh water, more farmland, and less death (cold kills far more than heat). All of which are better for people in general. I'd call that a decent upside. It's sure not all downsides, to suggest such is ludicrous.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
NOAA and/or the Weather Channel. I was checking both plus a local station numerous times a day. I've been watching this since it was first forecast to be coming to the US East Coast. For a day or two they were predicting landfall with wind speeds of 115 mph. As time got closer to actual landfall, Irene weakened instead of strengthened and those numbers came down.
Keep in mind, I'm not a meteorologist, it's just my neck of the woods and I love a good storm, so any time a tropical storm shows signs of landing in my backyard I start paying attention.
Well, change is rarely a good thing in the short term.
Well it's a good thing that climate change occurs in the long term then isn't it? You just walked right into that one... You are right, short term changes hurt, which is why most mitigation plans suck. They want things to change tomorrow expecting what may happen next year. All the mitigation we can do is meaningless if a volcano erupts in 10 years that causes mass cooling and then oh shit, we've gotta make it warmer.
At the end of the day, we have climate change. We have climate change because climate is NOT EVER CONSTANT. Whether or not we have anything to do with it, the climate will change. Colder, hotter, we need to prepare. Mitigation is not the answer, migration is. Human beings excel at several things. One of them as you pointed out is using fuel like it's going out of style. Another thing is adapting. We need to use the adaptation to our advantage. Migrate away from the coasts if they are disappearing. Migrate to higher latitudes if it is practical. Migrate to different fuels if it is economical.
I'm an engineer too, and I have faith that despite scientists telling us the sky is falling, we engineers are always a step ahead, finding solutions to tomorrow's problems today. I believe that humans can thrive in many climates, and I think that warmer is probably better in the long term. Looking at the history of life on this planet, the dinosaurs would tend to agree, warm is better. Ice ages suck.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
At 9:00 am Sunday morning, August 28, EDT. According to the Hurricane IRENE Advisory Archive. At that time, it was centered over New York City (it was 40 miles SSW of there an hour earlier). Until then, estimated and measured wind speeds made the system a hurricane.
If you want to dispute the accuracy of NWS current measurements and estimates, then research how they do it and dispute properly. They use recon aircraft, doppler radar, satellite imagery, balloons, and ships, in addition to buoys and automated surface observation systems, to measure and estimate wind speeds. If you want to dispute the NWS's predictions, then either learn meteorology and forecast models to prepare yourself, or compare past predictions to later observations. If you want to dispute the NWS's warning wording, then compare predicted conditions and their real world impact to the NWS's wording. If you want to dispute the media's hype, then compare their hype to the NWS's warnings, and have fun.
But do not ask such an amazingly easy to answer question like "When Did Irene Stop Being a Hurricane?" in order to stir provocation, without answering it. And do not look at some buoy and automated surface observation system data and claim there was no hurricane just from that.
Didn't anyone here watch Wag The Dog?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog
Your choice of media apparently isn't covering central Vermont and New Hampshire.
This is America, we don't care about some foreign countries nobody's ever heard of before.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
National Hurricane Center archives related to Irene here: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2011/IRENE.shtml?
Hurricane hunter observation data:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/recon/2011/REPNT2/REPNT2-KWBC.201108270110.txt
Line D of each report is the estimated surface winds based on disturbance of the surface of the ocean. Note they're above 64 kts, which means this is a hurricane.
How to decode that: http://www.ofcm.gov/nhop/11/pdf/17-app_g.pdf
Unfortunately, we lost the satellites that were giving us wind speed data based on radar interferometry of the surface of the ocean. So we're left with buoys and observations by the hurricane hunters.
Yup. And 80% of that is all the accidents that happen. Nobody knows how to drive in the stuff. Then the tow trucks run into ditches trying to get to them. The emergency crews aren't trained to drive in it either, so they get there to save the tow trucks reeeal slow.
The 2-inch effect is really just a classic demonstration of our crippling national dependency on the automobile. Like construction on the 405 this year. It's no joke.
As the storm was moving up to the coast, the NHC forecast meteorologist were observing in the forecast discussions that the flight level winds observed on reconnaisance flights were not really being reflected at the surface. Later on, the shift meteorologists were starting to mention that the winds were increasing substantially with height, more so than usual (as you go up, the impact of friction decreases).
The state of observation of maximum sustained winds is very difficult to do in tropical cyclones. For the most part, they sit in the ocean, where we don't have much in the way of observation capability. Sorry, no floating radar platforms or ASOS stations in the ocean. We're basically stuck with geostationary satellites, polar orbiting satellites making passes over storms, and reconnaisance flights that capture flight level winds in select locations. So naturally it's guesswork at times to see what's actually filtering down to the surface (frequently the discussion would read that the storm appearance and central pressure was supporting higher winds but they weren't manifesting).
As storms approach land, our observation capability gets better. Coastal radar starts to become a factor, and coastal radar is a lot better because we better update cycles (less guesswork as to how the storm is moving), and better wind estimates (we do have to contend with differences in the salt particle size and how radars have to be calibrated a little differently, but I'll let someone who understands radar better than I discuss that issue since it's not unusual to have to deal with that on the coast). Additionally, we also have a few more observation stations near the coast, but certainly by no means enough resolution to guarantee what the maximum sustained winds of a storm are.
One thing that Mass hinted at but didn't come out and say, is that the NHC is very cautious about downgrading storms when they are close to land because people treat them differently based on the labels given. If a storm is near the edge of tropical storm/hurricane strength near land, they are likely to upgrade, and less likely to downgrade. What's the big difference between a storm with maximum sustained winds of 70mph [60kt] and 74mph [65kt] other than the fact that one is called a tropical storm and the other is called a hurricane? Not much...especially in light of the fact that storm surge and precipitation are often important if not more important factors. In light of the fact that actual wind strength can be kind of guesswork, the storm was moving relatively fast, and moving towards populated areas without much historical experience with this type of storm, the reluctance is understandable.
One other concern is that some forecast models, the ones that are more probablistically based on location and intensity rather than dynamics are sensitive to the starting conditions. Frequently models have to be initialized using bogus data (since they may not know about the storms otherwise), and so the change in intensity can be a factor.
But I agree, I think the post storm writeup will be interesting when they sit down to determine the best track and intensity. They mentioned in the final discussion that a lot of radiosondes were sent up at the request of the NHC, so that may be helpful in figuring out vertically what was going on.
So if you're so inclined, go to http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2011/IRENE.shtml and read the forecast discussions as they were issued. They're very instructive about the issues that the forecasters were seeing as the storm was progressing.
Really? Suggesting we can migrate away from fossil fuels in 100 years is equivalent to aliens visiting earth?
Yes, you have produced exactly as much support for either contention. Did you not notice that? It's particularly jarring when you just got done complaining about other people's projections.
Think in 1911, when the Model T was the shiznit of cars. Did they know that there would be an explosion in vehicle traffic over the next century? Two breakthroughs could eliminate the vast majority of fossil fuel use extremely quickly. 1) Viable fusion power and 2) large capacity ultracapacitors. With both of those, electric would be plentiful and not produce any CO2 and pretty much every vehicle would be better off electric. In 100 years, I would hope we've made huge progress on both.
And you might as well hope for the aliens to bring the technology for all the actual certainty you can give to that hope.
Believe it or not, people knew about fossil fuels for quite a while, and were making steady progress using them. And no, the Model T was not the shiznit of cars, it was a rather poor vehicle, but its advantage was production, not performance.
However, if you want to look up a certain Francis Bacon, he did think up the idea some centuries beforehand. Also, somewhere from 65-90% of vehicles would be better off electric today, with available technology, but nobody has a magic fairy to wave a wand and convert them away from gas. But do look up conversion viability for electricity, it has been worked out, with most people's usage working quite well with available electric technology.
Doesn't mean it is any less silly for you to wish for other technological miracles while lambasting others for far less elusive projections.
I don't think you realize where we were 100 years ago. In 1911, there were approximately 1.6 billion people on the planet. Today there are close to 6.8. Billions of people are going to have their lives disrupted one way or another.
Particularly the billions who live within the near-coastal and equatorial areas.
I don't think you realize where people are today.
Yes, we may lose some coastal territory, yes we may have more severe weather, yes the polar bears might die as the ice caps melt. On the upside, vast, truly vast, areas of land will be habitable that are today barren deserts. Think of Canada, think of Russia. Look at a globe and compare the land area near the equator with the land area near the poles. Ok, so we lost New Orleans, but we gained literally tens of millions of square miles. In addition to gaining land, there will be more fresh water, more farmland, and less death (cold kills far more than heat). All of which are better for people in general. I'd call that a decent upside. It's sure not all downsides, to suggest such is ludicrous.
But to suggest that it's all upsides is equally ludicrous. And yes, you are doing that. Also ludicrous is describing Canada and Russia as barren deserts. In reality, they aren't. Parts of them might be frozen tundra for much of the year, but they aren't deserts, and they aren't necessarily fertile plains waiting for only the chance to be put under the plow. Heck, you aim wrong in your temperature projections, you might turn them from tundra to boiling deserts. Huzzah for your ideas.
You want to posit that it would be a net positive? You'll have to put some legwork into it, measure the disruption of billions of lives, measure what you can actually get from the lands, measure what you're going to lose in turn.
Show us the upside, don't just guess.
Otherwise you'll want to go pray for those miracle-bringing aliens.
category ratings don't capture the real threat
this storm was huge, slow, and dumped tons of water. that's the damage and danger. the wind speed wasn't an issue
a fast small cat 3 would do far less damage
so the lesson is: we need to retire the category system as primary indicator of threat level to lives and property. we need a new metric. taking into account size, speed, volume of rain AND windspeed. not just windspeed
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I was in Cape Charles, Virginia, 25-35 miles from the center at one point, and saw a max wind speed of 46.5 knots.
This just proves what the rest of the country knew all along: that New Yorkers are a bunch of self centered self absorbed sissies and pansies.
In the south, it snows at night, and gets above freezing during the day. That snow partially melts by the afternoon, and then refreezes at night. In 15 years of living in Texas, the only snow I've ever driven on was in my driveway. From the alley to the office is one continuous sheet of 1-2" thick ice.
moox. for a new generation.
The choice to keep it at a Cat1 strength seemed to rely on forecasted strength from Hurricane Hunter data, at least according to NHC discussions. They measured wind speeds in the area of 90-100kt up through NC, well within the range necessary to consider it a hurricane. The issue here seems to be that what the HH measured didn't exactly mesh with what ground-level observations were coming back in with.
I wouldn't call this a political conspiracy to shut down New York, but just a learning exercise. Hurricane forecasting has never been an exact science, and given the data available, I would still have rather NHC overdone the categorization and marked the storm a hurricane based on a small windfield than simply give an average -- maximum sustained winds are important, as that's essentially the worst of what you could possibly get for an extended period of time. Just because the west side of the storm didn't see these figures at ground level doesn't necessarily mean they were fudging the math.
All the mitigation we can do is meaningless if a volcano erupts in 10 years that causes mass cooling and then oh shit, we've gotta make it warmer.
I think I should be more specific when I say "mitigation". I'm not proposing that we try to control the climate - only deal with the after-effects. Everything from upgrading seawalls to planning for food security. And of course as you say: migration.
In the US, even if a coastal city like New York went under, we would be fine after some economic pain and it wouldn't cause a war. Hell, even if the entire state of Florida had to pack it up, it would happen fairly slowly and we'd just have a big building boom. There might even be enough empty buildings around Vegas :)
What worries me are places barely eking out an existence with substance farming and not enough land per person, as is. Those places go to war over stuff like climate change, and we tend to get drawn into such things.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You can over prepare and be extra ready for every storm, but it only takes not being ready once and more lives are lost and more property is destroyed.
Uh, maybe because snow is so rare as to not require municipal investment in snow removal equipment? Maybe the money would be better spent on hurricane preparedness or flood control? No, no, no...snow is "normal" within the tiny confines of sjbe's mind, and therefore everywhere in the world should be able to deal with it. Lost is the irony that now that the shoe is on the other foot, New Yorkers are freaking out at not even a hurricane, but a mere tropical storm.
How about this: why don't you open a snow tire business in Birmingham and see how well you do?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I live in a rural area in the Ozarks of Arkansas. It is true that a very small amount of snow (to my upper midwest born/raised sensibilities) brings school to a crashing halt here. But it's not because people do not know how to deal rationally with snow. It's because there are no snow plows, no deicer, and, most importantly, no pavement.
When nearly every road has a significant slope and gravel only if you're very very fortunate, roads become nearly impassible with even a small amount of snow. At only two inches of snow, my neighbors (all of them) are unable to make it up the hill to the highway. When the school buses can not reach the students, and less than 10% of the students are in a position to get to school otherwise, there is just no point in holding school. So...my kids get far more snow days than they want. They've lost their Spring Break the last two years because of snow days...
BTW, did you know that the Honda Odyssey becomes a total sled with only two inches of snow? I've watched our Odyssey, parked on a relatively level spot on the driveway, decide to just slide of the drive SIDEWAYS, down the hill, and into the ditch. Then it's, "wait for the snow to melt" before working to get it unstuck.
All of his data points come from the western side of the storm, the side commonly know to have significantly lower wind speeds.
Im just north of New York City and it did not get above 35mph sustained with occasional 50mph gusts here. I did however get nearly 8 inches of rain in 16 hours. Lots of flooded basements but hardly any wind damage. . I was expecting something more powerful based on all the media hype however it was a fizzle.
Which was my original point (I just foolishly said feet instead of millimeters).
New York is in a similar boat for a tropical storm, things just aren't built in the simple ways that would handle them easily - since they aren't common enough to worry about.
Just like other areas aren't built to handle snow - since it isn't common enough to worry about.
Weather is notoriously difficult to predict more than a day or so in advance. The predicted paths of hurricanes (Cyclones in the Southern Hemisphere) are based on models that are updated continuously, but are only accurate to a few hours. So, anyone who thinks that the weather service made poor judgements and predictions is either a complete fuckwit or doesn't understand how difficult the job is, or both.
so the devastating storm the news machine had hyped up simply never materialized
not defending the media here, but by what measure wasn't it devastating? 3rd or 4th deadliest hurricane in 30 years... billions and billions of dollars in property damage... check out what it was doing to Vermont.
I swear there is some kind of contest going on here to see who could be the least impressed with the weather.
The Admin and the Engineer
Warning people to protect themselves in the face of a legitimate threat has unmeasurable value to society, it can save countless lives and reduce the actual property damage resulting from unpreparedness. Crying wolf just teaches people to ignore the warnings.
I remember when in 2004 (the year before Kathrina) I read in the news that the major of New Orleans had ordered a (voluntary) evacuation of the city. Checking in wikipedia, I see this was in preparation for Hurricane Ivan. When I saw that and read a bit about how bad the flooding risk was I thought, wow, I need to visit New Orleans before it goes under. By a combination of circumstances I ended up actually visiting the city in December that year.
However, the wikipedia page on Kathrina does not say anything about this "false alarm" as a contributing cause to the bad handling of Kathrina: the major again declared a voluntary, and then a mandatory evacuation, and Ivan even served as a useful excercise of "contraflow" for the evacuation. The problem it seems was not that people did not take the warning seriously, but that they had either nowhere to go or no way to get there.
This is the worst /. comment I have ever read. But thanks for posting and letting everyone know Irene didn't impress you, moreso, you couldn't even tell if there was a storm or not. You must be so tough. I bet you either have a pickup truck, or dream about owning one someday... even though it would serve no purpose other than to augment your tough gritty "That's not a knife!" disposition.
The people still without power in VA probably didn't notice any storm either.
FYI posting AC so I can berate you and mod you down. Congratulations, dipshit.
In Pisa, Italy, where it snows once in every 5-10 years, usually with barely enough snow to stick to the ground for a few hours, that is enough to close all the schools for the day.
That's not for lack of salt or snow plows, however... I'm sure they don't have those ready, but it doesn't really matter, as it is not enough snow to cause disruption to road traffic anyhow. It's just that hey! it's snowing!
That's right, Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile smile smile! https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Pack_Up_Your_Troubles_in_Your_Old_Kit-Bag
In the UK it makes sense; seldom the populace of the United States of America can comprehend what it means to leave everything behind going to War and coming back to nothing.
All cows eat grass!
Did IQ's just drop while I was wasting my time watching the FOX news of weather, the Weather Channel? How is the parent a score 5? Insightful? "Just like New Yorkers get to giggle when those Southern folk shut down schools and stock pile supplies like survivalists because they got 2 feet of snow.". Wow, the discussions in this thread are polarized into North VS South, not unlike the earth quake last week was East VS West. I'm from Vermont and no one up here is is complaining. Dump 10 inches of rain ANYWHERE in the world in 24 hours and it will cause a crisis of some sort. We take care of ourselves. As to the topic of this tread about the storm force winds defining the levels of a storm, well, it might be time to redefine storm categories. It's just reciently been done with tornado's were had been judged by storm damage analyses by engineers after the storm has passed. "Most places that get tropical storms often enough don't build transportation systems that move millions of people below sea level with nothing preventing them from flooding. Just like most places that get snow don't not have snow plows and salt." How many houses are built in 100 year flood plains? 20% of homes in the US have flood insurance and they are not all in Vermont and New York City (the home of the other picante sauce).
Please mod me 1 or troll. It's where the truth is these days, even on Slashdot. Beware the power of moderators everywh
According to noaa's graphic charts, they give 100% probability of hurricane winds just off the coast of North Carolina. Also check the surface wind history which claims sustained 74mph winds over NC and into VA.
Any small low pressure fronts would've turned it into a much nastier hurricane, instead of downgrading to a tropical cyclone. Imagine if, after Katrina, the president dropped the ball on this.
The preventable flooding of the Mississipi was a bigger deal than this storm and should have been a bigger story. The Mississipi floods this spring/summer were more significant than this storm and the government could have prevented them. The Army Corps of Engineers was tasked with flood control, yet they failed to release a sufficient amount of water from the upstream dams to allow them to control the runoff from the unusually heavy snowfall last winter. Several regional managers for the Army Corps of Engineers reported to the decision maker that they had extremely heavy snow in their region and that if something was not done there would be bad flooding when the spring snow melt came. The decision maker chose to follow the "book" on what water levels should be in the various dams rather than release extra water so as to make room for the snow melt. If the person responsible had listened to the regional managers, the flooding would have been significantly reduced (or perhaps even prevented), yet there was very little news coverage of this fact.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
One link that I read religiously when there's a storm: http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html
Masters used to fly with the Hurricane Hunters, and his blog is one of the best. Go back and look over his assessment of the storm. Jeff was *never* that worried about the wind, and he explains what apparently has the news media baffled: Irene began an eyewall replacement cycle just before hitting NC, and never recovered.
When an eyewall replacement begins, the storm typically expands. In this case, it meant that Irene had a *HUGE* field of tropical storm-force winds, but only a small pocket of hurricane-force winds on the east side of the storm. Yes, it was a hurricane; just because dood can't find any buoys that support that doesn't mean that it isn't so. The hurricane hunters measured winds > 74 MPH, so it was a hurricane. The fact that winds > 74 MPH weren't recorded as having much land impact has nothing to do with the classification of the storm.
Now, I think the NHC kept the "hurricane" classification a bit longer than was justified, but they possibly did that because they KNOW that most people (especially the news media) focus on winds, instead of the REAL danger from a hurricane: flooding. Even if Irene had completely dissipated to little more than a weak tropical depression by the time it hit New Jersey, you'd still have major damage, power outages and loss of life just from the flooding.
The news media has NEVER understood that. They will invariably put some moron out in the wind with a camera, hoping to get an image of the guy being blown all over the beach. But the primary danger from Irene was flooding, as Masters points out repeatedly in his blog.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
The National Hurricane Center found that Irene was CATEGORY 3 off the Florida Coast, and running up the coast over the Gulf Stream. If you do your calculus properly, you have to plan for the fact that Irene could not help but remain a hurricane if (or when) it hits New York City. That would have been a disaster the likes of New Orleans (times ten, then times ten again). President Bush looked the fool by not taking precautionary measures; who could seriously blame President Obama for being Presidential?
CAT 3 (Florida): http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/gtwo/atl/201108281214/index.php?basin=atl¤t_issuance=201108281214
CAT 2 (NC) http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/gtwo/atl/201108270558/index.php?basin=atl¤t_issuance=201108270558
CAT 1 (New York) http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/gtwo/atl/201108260858/index.php?basin=atl¤t_issuance=201108260858
Check out the US Geological Survey in a couple more days to view the raw meterological data (usgs.gov)
Guanxi, your links are appreciated. Don't forget the US Geological Survey ( http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricanes/irene ), they will make the raw data available in a few more days. It looks like the baby-faced politicians are making mockery of the serious science of weather forecasting in a very apparent attempt to defund and dismantle another of our "Crown Jewels". If an agency doesn't drop bombs, wreck havoc or kill people ("Let God Sort Them Out", to use the vernacular), these numbskull pols consider it a waste of tax revenue. President Bush defunded the USGS to such an extent that he refused to issue a Tsunami warning to Indonesia; I guess Hurricane and severe weather forecasting is next on the chopping block.
For me in Virginia, the damage continues to accrue at $30/day for gas in the generator. 48 hours after it hit, exactly half of all traffic lights in the county were dark, with only three places to even buy gas.
Is it a rule, that there's an exception to every rule?
Tires. It's all about the tires.
Southern folks shut down when there is 2 INCHES of snow
True story: In the 1990s, Montgomery County, MD schools once closed because it might snow the next day.
Sounds like when I was in Portland Oregon for work. Living in Minnesota my whole life snow and ice are nothing, but there was one night while in Portland when the overnight low was going to be near 27F and the news made it seem like the end times were coming. They used words like dangerous, bitter, and frigid (try -30F to -40F and I know there are places where those temps seem warm) and I just laughed. Also they were going to get some rain snow mix that amounted to about a quarter inch. They shut the whole city down the next day, me I went out in my car and did some doughnuts in the intersections since no one was out. The most interesting part is that everyone out there has studded tires and/or tire chains, but few people in Minnesota have tire chains, and here studded tires are illegal but people in Portland can't handle a wimpy storm like that. Up in the mountains is is different story as there is some hairy conditions that happen up on Mt. Hood, but nothing like that in town. I went over Mt. Hood one day and had to take a different route back because shortly after I made it over they closed the road. I had the chains on my car and made it though but was plowing snow up and over the hood as I strove. It probably wasn't the brightest thing I had ever done but I was prepared and could have spend a couple of days in the car without issue if I did get stranded.
Learn to take care of you car
I wouldn't put it past the weather channel, but local weather news is even worse. There is a weatherman in North Alabama that will issue his own warnings in order to scoop the other TV station's news show.
The weather channel is so useless that I just monitor NOAA weather and http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ website. I'll never forget the piece of shit reporter from TWC who made a sensational story after a hurricane in Gulf Shores, AL while parked in front of the only neighborhood with standing water. The hurricane had downgraded significantly prior to landfall, and the reporter must have had a need to juice up the story. Anyway there were only a total of 5 houses that had standing water in them, but the reporter gave the impression that it was a regional disaster in the making.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
... They get my power back on.
Even people here in Minnesota people don't know how to drive in the ice and snow at the onset of winter. It usually takes 2 or 3 good storms before people figure out how to drive in it again, or we get all the bad drivers off the road since they wrecked their cars. I can't wait for the first storm since I like to go and practice driving in an empty parking lot at the high school near my house. You do need to re-learn how to start, stop, turn, and recover from a spin (shouldn't happen, but it is nice to know) and an empty parking lot is the perfect place since there isn't anything to hit.
Learn to take care of your car
The economy of the US is in the gutters. People aren't spending money.
Thus...the government hypes the storm. People panic. There is a run on stores, gas stations, etc. People on the coastlines in some areas cleaned out gas stations and stores completely.
Not to the mention the "You must evacuate" people. Right there alone we have the possibility of alot of gas, food on the go, hotel/motel/inns for 2+ days.
Just think about how much money got spent in the matter of a few days. Not a hard jump to make.
Welcome to a propaganda spewing fear mongering time.
.. The hurricane planes measured hurricane force wind in one of the outer bands of the hurricane. The storm is classified as a hurricane if any area of the storm has hurricane force winds present. Those winds do not need to be over a populated area, near the eye of the storm, or even at sea level. They just need to be somewhere in the storm.
New Yorkers get hysterical during any earthquake for a good reason. Most of them are working 60 stories up in buildings that are 50 or more years old and are not built to withstand ANY kind of earthquake.
San Fran and LA are built to much more exacting specs because your cities have been knocked down so many times.
If a 7.0 earthquake hit NYC during a workday, it would be catastrophic -- I don't think there's a building in Manhattan that would be standing. You'd be talking about millions of people dead.
Remember Haiti? So many died there because every structure was poorly built. Yet, if that same level of earthquake had hit LA, chances are there'd be a lot less damage and significantly less loss of life.
Even worse is that Manhattan is surrounded by water. If something like Japan's recent quake hit off the east side of the city, the Tsunami would wipe NYC off the map. That wave in Japan traveled 6 miles inland. That's akin to starting on the east side of Manhattan, washing over the entire city, slamming through Hoboken, and not stopping until reaching Giant's Stadium in Seacacus.
Again, millions dead if it was to happen during a work day. Those not killed from the tumbling buildings will certainly drown.
The point is: the major cities along the East Coast are not prepared for natural disasters, and with everything built hodge-podge since the times of the colonists, it's still built only well-enough to get by given our climate, no one ever spends the extra money to think about safety - one of the many reasons so many died on 9/11
Of course, since you're living in a zone more likely to be rattled, give us an update after you've had your 9.0, and half of the West Coast is lying in ruins. Let us know how well you slept through that.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Certainly; we're in total agreement. I was merely responding to another poster who said that the south does not know how to deal RATIONALLY with significant amounts of snow.
It's rational to not purchase and maintain equipment that would get very little use, just as it is rational for the upper eastern seaboard to generally not worry about hurricanes.
Now, I live about 600 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, so it would be rational for me not to worry about hurricanes. Nevertheless, we had the remains of a major gulf hurricane come through here about 5-6 years ago. Even though it had reduced to tropical storm intensity, it caused a significant amount of damage. When I built my house, I insisted on using hurricane clips for the roof, and metal straps from the foundation to the first floor walls and between floors of the house, not because I expected that to protect us from a tornado (it won't) but to protect us from the periodic high winds we get here. I've lived here 8 years now, and we've had 70+MPH straight line winds on numerous occasions.
The hurricane clips were cheap insurance.
Can we also tell the silly Northerners to stop complaining any time the temperature gets above 90 degrees Fahrenheit? We've had over 70 days off 100+ degrees here in Texas this summer and for the most part we're doing fine. What's that? The northern states are not as equipped to handle prolonged periods of high heat because it just doesn't happen that often? Imagine that...
The moment it lost its eye wall.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The tracking data at
http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/2011/IRENE/track.dat
shows
ADV LAT LON TIME WIND PR STAT
32A 41.80 -73.20 08/28/12Z 65 963 HURRICANE-1
33 41.40 -73.70 08/28/15Z 50 966 TROPICAL STORM
about 60 miles north of NYC
--
Times have not become more violent, they have just become more televised.
I live in Cary (Concentrated Area of Relocated Yankees) NC. All them Yankees think they can drive on our 2" of snow. They're the ones getting pulled out of ditches. All the locals know to stay home. You can't drive on our 2" of snow, 'cause it ain't snow. It's ice, with just a slight amount of sun-melted liquid water on top. There is NO measurable traction between the tire and the slicked ice. Zero. None. Nada. It not like up north where the ice freezes solid and stays that way.
I got home early before it really got started, but the worst weather traffic I've ever seen was a few winters back when there was just barely a 1/8" sheet of ice left on the roads. Nothing could move.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
The people complaining about being told to evacuate are the same people who made fun of "those people" for not evacuating before Katrina because they thought that hurricane was all hyped up as well.
The flooding devastation of Katrina in New Orleans was human error not mother nature. A man made levee broke after a barge crashed into it and flooded areas of the city that were constructed on land built below sea level. According to wikipedia Katrina was only a catagory 3 hurricane when it made landfall. There have only been three hurricanes in the last 100 years that were catagory 5 when making landfall in the US.
In case you ever wondered if the corporate news is just pure propaganda, apologies for the establishment and last, but not least, explosive, worthless "breaking news", like Irene. This is the US corporate news fulfilling its institutional role; Distract you while the US business elite steal your money and changes laws to make stealing from/spying on you easier, then apologize when they do. Hope you enjoyed the hurricane and Casey Anthony coverage! Didn't cost anything but freedom and money.
...are the people who have power. From those of us that STILL do not have power (this includes myself, with an ETA from BGE of FRIDAY): go fuck yourselves.
The wind speed and classification doesn't fucking matter. What does matter is the amount of DAMAGE the storm left in it's wake.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
I never said that ultracaps and fusion were a certainty. But I would posit that they are far more likely than an alien visit. Fusion reactions already exist, it's just a matter of harnessing the energy. Ultracapacitors already exist, it's just a matter of making them larger. Aliens might exist, but we've had no evidence, no communication, and indeed if light speed is the galactic speed limit, it is likely that they wouldn't even bother visiting.
My point is that I am not banking on technological miracles in the future, but rather technological advancement. As technology improves, it will use less power, be more useful, and use less materials than current technology. That is not some pipe dream, that is based on development since the industrial revolution.
And as far as your claims about the negatives and positives about global warming, I have admitted there will be problems (which you kind of ignored since you said that I made a claim of only positives). Yet you dismissed any possibility of an upside at all. I say there will likely be more livable land area, which seems pretty reasonable considering the amount of land that is currently frozen, and you dismiss it with "they could just as likely be "boiling deserts". There will still be snow with global warming, there will still be glaciers. I'd guess that most climate scientists would agree with that. They would probably also agree that large landmasses would get warm enough to live in with significant warming. However, despite your insistence that I produce facts instead of guess, there don't appear to be any major studies of the net gain (or loss) of arable land given a certain temperature change. Hmm, maybe climate scientists should start working on that rather than continue to tweak their computer models. But that might produce a positive effect of global warming, and we can't have that now can we? Your whole world view would be shattered!
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Having gone without power because of storms myself, my thoughts are with you.
Maybe you can amuse yourself by keeping a count of how many times you walk into a room and flip the light switch without even thinking about it. :)
(No, it doesn't help a lot, but it helps take your mind of things at least a little bit.)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
Hell, I grew up near Philly, and now live near Cincinnati. The two cities get almost the exact same weather systems, hitting Philly a day or two after Cincinnati.
My mind is boggled on a yearly basis when schools in Cincinnati shut down because there's *less* than an inch of snow predicted.
BTW, did you know that the Honda Odyssey becomes a total sled with only two inches of snow?
Strong possibility it is due to the tires you use. Odyssey's are pretty common around here and they do ok in the winter. Where I live I'd put on a set of snow tires. They make an amazing difference especially for cars that normally don't do well in sloppy conditions. I have a little sports car (light weight, front engine, rear drive) that without snow tires becomes seriously toboggan-esqe. With snow tires it is actually not bad. Not going to mistake it for my 4x4 truck but certainly fine 99% of the time.
1. Federal Agencies-They have been predicting huge hurricane seasons for years due to man made global warming and have been dead wrong. They need as many hurricanes as possible to get their credibility back, even if it is only a tropical storm-thus they LIE.
2. News agencies-competition is fierce and they need viewers. Sensationalism therefore becomes the norm. I used to love the weather channel. It now sickens me to watch it.
3. Politicians-They needs their FEMA money. Therefore every storm is the "worst I have ever seen".
I've found the Michelin HydroEdge to be a great tire for holding the road in dry and wet conditions. But they proved to be absolutely the worst tire I've ever used for snowy conditions.
Seems to be that a lot of the good wet tires are absolute crap in snow. Not sure why but seems to be common.
I used to live not far from the Ozarks believe it or not so I understand your challenge. Hard to justify chewing up a set of snow tires for the piddling amount of snow that usually shows up. A good set of all weathers and (just in case of emergency) a set of tire chains seems to be the best compromise.
Guess a few billion = Little.
Lost business, lost travel money with airports shutdown, lost tourism (Late summer weekend generate this), just to name a few sources.
Just another day in Paradise