100K Lose Power As America Faces Its Third Hurricane In Three Weeks (go.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The good news: Hurricane Nate was eventually downgraded to "a tropical storm" at 4:30 Sunday morning (EST), moving north-northeast with maximum winds of 70 mph. The bad news: 100,000 people don't have power in Mississippi and Alabama, and a tornado watch is in effect until 11 a.m. "Even though Nate has made landfall and will weaken today, we are still forecasting heavy rain from Nate to spread well inland towards the Tennessee Valley and Appalachian mountains," ABC News meteorologist Daniel Manzo said Sunday morning. Saturday the Gulf Coast near Biloxi, Mississippi was hit with 85 mph winds and a storm surge of between four to five feet. "Gulf Coast residents are waking up to a wet, windy -- and in some cases, powerless -- Sunday morning," reports ABC News, "but it's still not as devastating as they expected."

Comments

Taking about the weather

[Anonymous Coward]

You know it's a slow news day when Slashdot is posting articles about the weather. Not about weather, but the actual weather.

BTW, will it rain tomorrow in San Jose?

Third?

[ChoGGi]

You mean fourth...

Re:Lost Power

[Anonymous Coward]

Reliable electric power requires underground cables. Those are expensive with a very long return on investment. Typically not something corporations want to invest in, you need governments for that. but, yuck, socialism.

It's time to consider god's plan

[hyades1]

My heart aches for the people of Texas and Mississippi and Florida and Georgia, whose people have been punished by four hurricanes this year alone.

These states, with churches on every corner and the love of God in their hearts, are being targeted. We must ask ourselves why. Consider Toronto and San Francisco, the two gayest cities on the continent. Neither has been affected by a single serious storm.

It is time to get with God, my friends. He has made His feelings abundantly clear. It is time to make room in your hearts, your homes and your bakeries for The Gays.

You cannot argue with God...unless you want to face His punishment.

Re:It's time to consider god's plan

[Anonymous Coward]

It is time to get with God, my friends. He has made His feelings abundantly clear.

If we're going with divine attribution, I would say it's morely likely their rejection of the truth that is climate change. Now if they get hit by a hurricane "Nigel" or "Fernando", then we'll know it's because of the gays. ;)

I think we are being punished for our multiple failures when it comes to picking good leaders, and I think that harsher weather could easily be a part of that punishment. Ann Rand once wrote, "We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality." I find it amusing that it is a quote attributed to her, but it nevertheless fits.

1. When we ignore every other issue and vote on a wedge issue, we get the possible consequences of every other issue getting worse.

2. When we elect people who don't care about the environment, we get the actual consequence of the environment going to hell faster.

3. When we elect people who divide and hate we get division and hate.

4. When we accept that every time something bad happens that it is forbidden to talk about the bad thing, unless it pushes a party's agenda, then nothing gets done.

5. When we elect someone who is shown to be a serial liar and con man, who will say anything for power, well, we get that, and all the damage that comes from it.

The question about the third hurricane in three weeks are:
1. Are people building where they should not, or where, at the very least they should be paying exorbitant insurance costs?
2. Can our future actions influence future storms?
3. Assuming two is a yes, does it make sense to do so from a long term perspective? (I'm leaning towards yes, since being more energy efficient is better all around.)

Re:Still no global warming

[Solandri]

This hurricane season is notable mainly because a hurricane hadn't made landfall on the U.S. since 2005 (which ironically after Katrina and Wilma, is when people were saying that due to climate change, multiple major hurricanes hitting the U.S. each year was going to be the new norm). That's pretty incredible when you consider that the historical average for the U.S. over 164 years has been 1.73 hurricanes per year making landfall. We basically missed out on being hit by 21 hurricanes in a row.

The average North Atlantic hurricane season sees 10.1 named storms, 5.9 becoming hurricanes, and 2.5 becoming major hurricanes (category 3+). These things tend to be cyclical though, with a few decades with below average storms, followed by a few decades of above average storms, repeat. The prediction for the season was 11-17 named storms, 5-9 hurricanes, and 2-4 major hurricanes. We're almost to the end of the season and currently at 14 named storms, 9 hurricanes, and 5 major hurricanes. Just slightly above predicted.

In terms of number of global cyclones (it is after all called global warming), the North Atlantic is the only basin which has seen an uptick in hurricanes the last couple decades. The East Pacific is flat. Typhoons in West Pacific are mostly flat with a slight downward trend. The South Pacific is down. As are cyclones inthe Indian Ocean.

If we can go an unprecedented 12 years without a hurricane making landfall in the U.S., can you just for a tiny moment consider the possibility that what happened this year was random before jumping to the conclusion that it was due to climate change? (FWIW, I'm of the opinion that climate change adds more energy to the system, increasing not just maximum intensity but also variability. The recent 12 years without a hurricane can mostly be attributed to a very strong El Nino which had the side-effect of reducing the probability of Atlantic hurricanes reaching the higher latitudes like the U.S. However, this being a hypothesis, the burden of proof is upon me. The null hypothesis - the theory that one assumes is true absent statistically significant evidence for an alternative - has to be that there has bee no change in number or intensity of hurricanes. You can get yourself into a lot of trouble if you go hog wild on every theory which has a tiny bit of correlative (but not statistically significant) empirical support. Of such things, conspiracy theories are made.)

Re:Really?

[hey!]

What I'm saying is that most people are parochial in their outlook, both in space and time. If something doesn't happen to them personally and preferably very recently, it might as well never happen as far as their opinions are concerned.