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."

Comments

Media Hype(rcane)

[AbsoluteXyro]

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.

Re:Media Hype(rcane)

[NeutronCowboy]

I think what's kinda telling is that the prediction services and government agencies can't win. Shrug it off as another storm; people crucify you if one person dies. Sound the alarm, shut down major cities, and people crucify you if there aren't at least a few hundred dead. Unless everything happens exactly according to predictions, and everything can be fixed up within a week, it's a major disaster and scapegoats need to be scapegoated. And the media is definitely part of the problem. We are hardwired to look at how people in our surroundings behave to figure out how we should behave. If everyone on TV is going ape-shit, we're going to go ape-shit as well. I'd love the news media to take a hard look at how they report on events, and how it influences the discussion around events.

I guess there's a reason that the only news agencies I've paid money for in the last 5 years are The Economist and my local public radio station.

Re:Media Hype(rcane)

[flappinbooger]

Here's my take on Irene. It wasn't "that bad" of a storm but see below. I was in SW Florida from 2003 to 2005 and watched Charlie, Ivan, Katrina and Wilma (and all the others) come by. Some of them were severe. I was directly in the path of Charlie and Wilma. They all had very sharply formed eye walls as I recall, because when you live there you're checking the track and satellite images about every 4 hours. Irene didn't rebuild the eyewall and thus didn't strengthen as much. You looked at Wilma and it just looked mean. They said at the time if the scale went to cat 6 Wilma would be a 6.

That being said even a category 1 hurricane can mess you up. If you're in the way of storm surge and on a coastal region it's simply a good idea to evacuate. Crap can blow into your house and trees can fall on you. If you're on the coast at 1 foot above sea level and they are saying 6 foot storm surge that means you can get 5 feet of water in your house. Want to be there for that? No. Can it happen? Yes. Can it NOT happen? Yes. Do they know 100%? No.

Another thing to mention, even though hurricanes take days to get to you, they can and do change course affecting their landfall by up to several miles in a matter of minutes to hours. Charlie was literally heading right up the Caloosahachee river - which I lived a block away from at the time, just off McGregor Blvd in Fort Myers. I took my pregnant wife and kid and went inland a few miles. When it hit Sanabel Island it changed course and went north and hit Punta Gorda really hard. It was a last minute change. I don't recall the people who evacuated FM bitching that it missed. Instead most were disturbed by the total destruction and deaths where it hit. I worked with a guy who volunteered with the red cross and he was stunned by the scale and totality of destruction caused by Charlie when it hit land in Fla.

You're right, they can't win but they have to error on the side of caution because the cost of not being careful enough is lives lost. The only cost of being wrong the other way is getting yelled at. I'd sleep better at night being careful.

The aftermath of a hurricane sucks. No power. No phone. Cell towers last 24 to 48 hours on battery, then they go out. Gas stations run out of gas. No A/C. Ice is like gold. Cash only, no phone or power for credit cards. Banks aren't open - no power no ATM no cash. Stuff spoils and condiments are EXPENSIVE when you have to replace them all. If you have damage you are likely on your own because everyone around you will have damage too. Watch out for con artist contractors. The good times are when blocks come together and have massive cookouts because you gotta cook the meat before it spoils. Those are the good memories.

Anyway, here's a funny anecdote. Funny now anyway. After Charlie hit there was non-stop news coverage for DAYS on the Fort Myers stations. It basically missed Naples, a very high class city, as you know. The day after it hit, they pre-empted a major golf tournament for hurricane coverage. People from Naples called in to complain they couldn't watch the golf tournament. Their reply was "Um, we're sorry you're unhappy, but we're covering the hurricane now because PEOPLE ARE DEAD AND MISSING.

Re:Who cares...

[gcnaddict]

it really wasn't much of a storm

Tell that to Vermont, as well as to the millions out of power, the people and institutions which suffered billions of dollars in damage, and the relatives of those who lost their lives.

This was still a nasty storm.

Re:Who cares...

[mellon]

I don't understand why anyone would mod the above article flamebait. The fact is that this was a tremendously destructive storm, because of all the moisture that it carried. I'm right there with people who want facts to be reported accurately, but the degree of preparation that went on before this storm was entirely appropriate. Should New York City have kept running the subway lines? The tunnels flooded! Should those people in Groton, CT, who boarded up their windows not have bothered? Some of their neighbors' houses were washed away. What about the damage on the Jersey Shore, and in North Carolina? Hype?

In my town alone, with a population of about 14k, there were 30 swift water rescues during the flooding. Houses were carried downriver. Propane tanks, hissing gas, were carried downriver. A young woman was swept away downriver, and drowned, two towns west of here.

What is amazing about this storm is that despite how serious it was, and despite all the damage that was done, so few lives were lost. Many towns in Vermont flooded, and some can only be reached by class 3 roads that are barely passable because the main road and the alternate have washed out, and the road that _is_ passable has two-foot waves in it.

We were shocked by the ferocity of the flooding. Yesterday morning I foolishly thought that the danger had passed, and this was a flash in the pan. I had no idea what that giant bank of orange on the radar over the Green Mountains meant. I'm really glad someone did, and that people got warnings in time, and weren't in the path of the flood waters when they came roaring down Whetstone Brook. I'm really glad that low-lying trailer parks were successfully evacuated, and that we are not reading about the tragic loss of life that could have occurred, but instead about people wondering when they can go back to assess the damage.

So if there was some scientific inaccuracy in the exact name that was given to the type of storm this was, I guess that's of some academic interest, but if this storm had gotten a different name, and that had resulted in less preparation, that would have really sucked. Some of my neighbors would be dead now.

I think this is the point that the parent was trying to convey. It's not flamebait. If there's a problem to correct, let's make sure that correcting it doesn't result in less hype the next time a storm like this comes through.

Re:Who cares...

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

You're assuming a hurricane is worse than not-a-hurricane. It isn't always. Hurricane reflects windspeed, but speed is not the only measure of damage.

I was on Nantucket for a wedding during Hurricane Bob. We stayed in a tiny, poorly-built cottage right over a small dune from the ocean. During the storm itself, we moved to higher ground and a better-constructed building, but the tiny, poorly-built cottage was fine. A Noreaster came through six months later, broke through the sand dune, and took out the cottage and all the cottages around it, and caused much more damage than hurricane Bob had generally.

In this hurricane, the water was the damaging factor, not the windspeed, and the water could have been far worse very easily. Places in Virginia got 16" of rain. Normally at 4" of rain, a county or municipality will have major outages.