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Landfall Nears For Strongest Hurricane In Recorded History (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Patricia — the strongest hurricane ever recorded — barreled closer and closer Friday to Mexico's Pacific coast, where residents have been told to brace for its 200-mph sustained winds and torrential rains. The early Friday central pressure recording of 880 millibars (the barometric pressure equivalent is 25.98 inches) "is the lowest for any tropical cyclone globally for over 30 years," according to the Met Office, Britain's weather service. One other thing alarming about Patricia is its rapid rise in intensity. It rated as a tropical storm early Thursday, but 24 hours later it had become a Category 5 hurricane. Among other effects, El Niño has contributed to ocean waters off Mexico being 2 to 3 degrees warmer than usual. "That warm water from El Niño probably just pushed this slightly over the edge to be the strongest storm on record," CNN's Myers said.
Well we know we can ignore your opinion since there is no such things as cat 6 or 7 hurricane. Also this is the first cat 5 to make landfall in 11 years, so 1 event every decade is now proof that it will constantly happen every year now.
The belt of warm water feeding this late-season hurricane is from El Niño, which is a cycle independent of all other cycles, and not a part of any carbon warming that may be occurring.
Not to mention that the records keep getting revised: there were hurricanes measured at higher strengths in the 1960's, but they've been "revised" downwards. Now new hurricanes are "the strongest ever recorded."
How long is the recorded history of similarly accurate storm measurement? How old is the planet? Maybe we're just in a cycle that is a bit longer than the amount of time people have been able to measure hurricanes, or have been able to measure them as accurately.
The other reply is misleading.
We've been using "modern" measurements for hurricanes since about 1959, which just happened to have a record storm. BUT... that year also had an El Nino. And the strong El Nino of this year again made one more likely. Nothing terribly special about that, statistically. And nothing particular connecting it to "global warming".
Prior to that time, hurricanes were only actually measured at all when they made landfall. Others were only estimated from ships or from shore. Which means most of them were never measured, and in fact we actually have no idea where Patricia falls in the severity range since records began.
> That's one of the many reason the LYING, money-sucking "Climatologists" had to drop the moniker "Global Warming" in favor of the "Well, we can always claim it" name "Climate Change".
To which the proper response is still: "What part of 'chaotic' do you not understand?"
I would say the same thing, to those who see "Patterns" of "Climate Change" where in reality, none exist.
Hence, Chaos.
And said El Nino is being fed by carbon warming.
If it were, that would be good for California, because they can use some extra water (which tends to come in El Nino years).
Unfortunately there is no good computer modeling able to predict El Nino, and the models are divided on whether El Nino will increase or decrease as a result of AGW.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
About an hour ago another NOAA plane did readings while flying through the storm:
"the plane reported an extrapolated surface pressure of 902.6 millibars based on measurements from the aircraft. Peak flight-level winds were 166 mph during this pass."
So, um, the storm weakened by > 20% in an hour? So now it is just a regular Cat 5 which have hit this area regularly.
It's interesting to note that while the 2015 hurricane season has been relatively quiet in the North Atlantic, when we expand to the entire world in our scope, it's been one of, if not the most, active years on record, with something like 22 storms that were Category 4 or higher, which is itself a record.
We were also pretty lucky that Joaquin steered out to sea rather than slamming into the east coast (and even then managed to dump catastrophic rainfall on South Carolina. It was within a day or two of really hammering some heavily populated areas that aren't really built to withstand regular hurricanes.