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Hurricane Irma Reaches 185 MPH, Trailing Only Allen As Strongest Atlantic Storm On Record (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: We are quickly running out of adjectives to describe the destructive potential of Hurricane Irma. As of 2pm ET on Tuesday, the National Hurricane Center upgraded the storm's sustained winds to 185mph. This is near-record speed for a storm in the Atlantic basin, which includes the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico. Such high, sustained winds tie Irma for the second-strongest storm on record in the Atlantic, along with Hurricane Wilma (2005), Hurricane Gilbert (1998), and the 1935 Florida Keys hurricane. Only Hurricane Allen, which reached 190 mph in 1980 before striking a relatively unpopulated area of Texas, reached a higher wind speed. Globally, the all-time record for hurricanes is held by Patricia, which reached a staggering 215 mph in the Pacific Ocean in 2015. Although sustained winds capture the most public attention, meteorologists generally measure the intensity of a storm based upon central pressures, which are considerably lower than sea-level pressure on Earth, 1,013 millibars. Typhoon Tip, in 1979, holds this record at 870 millibars. For now, at least, Irma has a relatively high central pressure of 927 millibars. Why the storm has such an odd wind-speed-pressure relationship isn't entirely clear. According to the National Hurricane Center, Irma is expected to bring catastrophic winds and potential storm surges to the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and the UK territory of Turks and Caicos this week. The Florida Keys could get hit by late Saturday night or Sunday.

10 of 318 comments (clear)

  1. Camille by cirby · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...probably reached 200 MPH, but the instruments at Keesler AFB were blown away when Camille hit Biloxi, so they can't count "sustained wind speed."

    1. Re:Camille by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I remember Camille. My mom woke me up at 2am, and told me to grab everything I own and take it upstairs. The flood waters from the neighborhood creek were already at our front porch. About 10 minutes later, muddy water started gurgling out of the heater vents on the floor of my bedroom. The water rose another 30cm over the next few hours.

      My room was a muddy mess the next morning. But it was worth it because school was cancelled for a week.

      This was more than 400 km from landfall.

      I happened almost exactly a month after Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

    2. Re:Camille by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      the instruments at Keesler AFB were blown away when Camille hit Biloxi

      I just moved out of Houston and I was there for Hurricane Harvey. When it hit Corpus Christie, every weather station from there to Galveston was just blown away. And that was "only" a Category Four.

      I never want to be near a hurricane like that again. It scared the crap out of me. We were supposed to have moved (driving to the California Central Coast) the day before Harvey hit, and it obliterated our schedule. Couldn't leave town until a week later when the water receded enough off the highways that one lane of traffic could get out. Tons of people were still evacuating, because the "controlled" release of water from the reservoirs was flooding neighborhoods that hadn't flooded during the initial 50+ inches of rain. It took us the entire first day of driving just to get out of Houston city limits and all together, after a day of driving, we only got as far as College Station.

      We just arrived in our new place in Cali today. There are wildfires a few hundred miles away, but here where I am, right on the coast, there's no danger of burning. At least that what I'm told. Screw natural disasters. I don't like 'em one bit, no sir. Did you know that the constant sound of heavy rain on the windows for five solid days can make you completely insane?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  2. Re:Local meterologist by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Uh, that's not quite the way hurricanes work. They don't "slam into" something and stop. Caribbean islands are small compared to hurricanes!

    They stop when they traverse a region where they are separated from the warm ocean, which is (in essence) their power source.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  3. Squeeze that data to fit that model!! by SuperKendall · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I see that link was JUST published (Aug 30 2017). Because after all, what we have seen this year is larger than average storms...

    So of course your death cult needs a new story to back up it's belief system, by making predictions around things that have already happened.

    However mankind had developed this thing called Google, and it shows the duplicity of your fellow cult members in stark relief to your assertions.

    No matter that the link you just provided will be proven utterly false over the next five years, you'll just publish some new lies for the masses to consume.

    There are MANY people who claimed Global Warming meant more frequent hurricanes, before we had a major lull in recent years...

    That's because none of you seem to even understand physics, much less climate, or you would understand global warming means neither more frequent nor any change to the average size of hurricanes.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  4. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The only question you need to ask the pseudoskeptics is "Where do you think all the extra energy is going?"

    That CO2 absorbs solar radiation and traps it in the lower atmosphere is not debatable. These absorption patterns of CO2 have been known since the 19th century. So, increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, increase the amount of energy (heat) being trapped.

    That CO2 interacts with ocean water and alters its pH has been known probably even longer. Increase the amount of CO2 in the lower atmosphere, increase the amount of absorption of CO2 in salt water.

    So we can dicker about which storms are being made more powerful by climate change, we can dicker about whether a colder winter in one part of the world or a warmer winter in another part is caused by climate change, but the fact is that the steady increase in CO2 concentration inevitably, by the physical laws of nature, will increase the amount of energy trapped in the lower atmosphere (increase overall surface temperatures as a mean) and increase the acidity of the oceans. There is no questioning this, unless one wishes to throw out well over a century of physics and chemistry.

    Now, if these folks have some magic heat sink that blasts all that energy off into space, then by all means, point to where it is, otherwise all we're doing in debating with these liars and idiots is dignifying their fraud and stupidity. They are the Creationists of the 21st century; not pseudoscientists, no pseudoskeptics, just plain old morons and liars.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  5. Fixed link by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sorry, here is a link to the many, many people who claimed Global Warming would cause more hurricanes.

    It's also funny how the GFDL used to claim global warming would neither make hurricanes more frequent nor more powerful...

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  6. Re:Winter is coming by riverat1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Human industrial activity within the past 300 years, especially with the most significant of it happening only within the past 100 years, is not responsible for the ice sheets retreating. This most recent cycle of retreating glaciation has been going on for over 10,000 years now, and started well before humans were engaging in any sort of notable industrial activity.

    The more recent cycle of retreating glaciation started over 20,000 years ago and was largely over by the Holocene Climatic Optimum 5,000-9,000 years ago. Since then temperatures have generally been declining and glaciers growing ... until recently when anthropogenic global warming has taken over.

  7. Re:Winter is coming by deviated_prevert · · Score: 3, Interesting

    We'll all remember your instance that weather is climate the furst extreme cold snap that occurs this winter, which by your logic utterly disproves global warming...

    I guess to you it's just an "inconvenient truth" how long it's been since we've even had any serious hurticanes hit the US.

    Part of the reason why the hurricanes were absent was because of an unusual prolonged el Nino in the Pacific. The duration and severity of the typhoons in the Eastern Pacific during the el Nino years were also effected. But because typhoons do not directly effect North Americans by and large they are ignored. Now the situation is doing a wild swing in the other direction. Now we see the jet stream taking a long sweep to the north all summer pumping moisture eastward like a vacuum cleaner gone mad. All indications of radical changes in the earths climate. These changes are like the mood swings in bipolar individuals that are becoming suicidal.

    The upside of the damage that is being done is that it might just shut down a fair portion of the biggest polluters and make gasoline and oil refining too expense to maintain thereby effectively reducing North American oil consumption. Houston and the gulf coast was a dumb place to put the majority of North America's key oil refining infrastructure the same as putting the Fukushima nuclear facility near the ocean in an earth quake hot spot was not exactly the best idea it was just the cheapest place to build because of the easy water and a handy heavy lift port access.

    We are in for a very rough ride, this is just the beginning of hurricane season and a sustained change in corresponding ocean temperature patterns. My bet is that the majority of US centric ignorant Americans do not even know about the very recent North Pacific Blob and how radical changes in the ocean temp there are strongly effecting much more than just global weather patterns in ways never seen in history.

    Right now large areas of Southern California are experiencing temps that are marginal for human survival. 45 degrees C over more than a few days is downright dangerous and the pattern of extreme summer drought on the West Coast will be followed with flooding in winter. Unfortunately we have brought this situation on ourselves and it will take huge human die off to effectively wake people up. Ocean temp change are contributing to the loss of a huge portion of the ocean's fisheries which is almost exclusively from our activities. The rapid loss of cheap protein from ocean sources will be the first phase of a planetary human die off. Be prepared for Friskies kitty vitals at 10 dollars a can boys! MEOW

    --
    This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
  8. Re:Winter is coming by deviated_prevert · · Score: 1, Interesting

    None of your rant is actually relevant. The problem wasn't "weather pumping anything all summer. it was the fact that we got an oddball hurricane that decided to linger a bit. If not for this peculiar bit of movement it would have been much less interesting and damaging.

    Your narrative doesn't explain what happened.

    > Right now large areas of Southern California are experiencing temps that are marginal for human survival.

    You mean the desert? It's always been like that. Just ask anyone that's ever lived in Nevada, Arizona, or southern Utah. This is the sort of hysterical silliness that makes "deniers" out of people.

    I doubt if Eastern North Americans know anything about what is currently happening in the West. The areas of the west that are experiencing record breaking temperatures and drought are far greater than the news media in the east is reporting. The heat wave in British Columbia is breaking all records for lack of rainfall and the areas of California reaching over 110f are not the areas you have stated!

    To state that hurricanes in the Atlantic have nothing to do with the shifting climate cycles of the Pacific and the corresponding unusual and prolonged northern track of the jet stream is just plain wrong. A normal el Nino year would by now see a moderate cooling of the waters of the Atlantic where hurricanes start to form. Instead because the jet stream is staying way to the north cooler air is not making it to the areas of the Atlantic that are carried south and east by the trade winds. If this situation continues to the end of September then the Atlantic could easily spawn serious hurricanes into November instead of just the usual tropical depressions that send fall and winter rains to the east coast of North America. I suggest you go work for Ronald Frump, who knows he might need some help rebuilding his golf courses in Florida soon if Irma hits land there at cat 5 ;-) My apologies to Ronald Frump. Also my sincere apologies to the real Republican Ronald Frump in Florida who has a very unfortunate name but would most likely make a better POTUS than the current moron.

    --
    This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call