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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."
a TROPICAL DEPRESSION
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?
You mean fourth...
Key West is just as gay as SF and they get hit all the time.
Fort Lauderdale is also very gay.
Of more concern is the demise of TOM PETTY.
TOM PETTY was a wonderful guy.
At least we still have the vocalist of the greatest band of all time!
Oh, come now. This is news for nerds after all.
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Certain people like to confuse hurricanes not hitting the US and hurricanes not happening at all.
Hurricanes hitting the US are the product of a long string of chaotic interactions between low pressure areas and surrounding weather systems. Climate models aren't very good at predicting those, so we don't really know if hurricanes will be more frequent under the various global warming scenarios.
The thing that the models consistently point to is greater rainfall, wherever the hurricane happens to go. That, along with increased development in flood-prone areas, will make future hurricanes more costly and dangerous.
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Why is it that the utility we rely on most, electric power, is the least reliable? Here in east central Florida, anything more than a brisk zephyr knocks the power out, let alone a hurricane. Any time there is a storm pretty much anywhere, thousands of people lose power. How can we be in 2017 with such a shitty power grid that fails at the slightest adverse weather?
Close, but not really.
Climate models do not predict more hurricanes.
They do predict stronger hurricanes.
We also conclude that it is likely that climate warming will cause hurricanes in the coming century to be more intense globally and to have higher rainfall rates than present-day hurricanes. In our view, there are better than even odds that the numbers of very intense (category 4 and 5) hurricanes will increase by a substantial fraction in some basins, while it is likely that the annual number of tropical storms globally will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged.
Reference
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
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.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
If number of hurricanes is your measure, then recent history suggests global cooling.
There may very well be AGW, but hurricanes aren't proof of it. You would expect, maybe, 2 or 3 extra hurricanes a century, with a 2% increase in average strength.
AGW does itself a disservice by hyperventillating over things like this. Look into things like regression to the mean and what a few degrees actually means.
We also have the situation that climate in the media has now reached the point where people make movies like Geostorm. I saw a preview for that this weekend and hadn't actually realized just how ridiculous things are until that moment. I mean, I kind of knew society is crazy, but that made me feel it viscerally.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Where did I say hurricanes will be more frequent?
I'm quite familiar with the IPCC projections, by the way. That's why I didn't suggest that hurricanes would be more frequent. And as the model results suggesting hurricanes would be stronger are relatively weak, I left those out. The one thing the models consistently predict is more rainfall. And that's serious enough.
Now denilaists like to set up staw men to paint concern over AGW as "alarmist", and there are people peddling scenarios (like human extinction) that are extremely improbable. I steer clear of that by sticking with what there's overwhelming evidence for, and that this: climate change is going to cost us a boatload of money to deal with.
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Anyways, it's going to be, nominally, the same number of hurricanes but their strength will increase because they are heat engines and, by definition, there will be more heat.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
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.)
Hacking a global weather control network is a pretty old sci-fi trope. It's just a variant on technology run amok.
Had a movie along these lines been done fifty years ago it almost certainly would have been better. That's because without elaborate computer generated effects to rub into your eyeballs the director would have had to use suspense to entertain the audience.
In any case being scientifically literate ruins most movie and TV sci-fi. I spent most of the Star Trek Discovery premier pissed off by fact that the writers are apparently unaware that most visible stars in the galaxy are multiple star systems, and that being near a binary wouldn't change the amount of radiation experienced by astronauts much if at all. But then I get irritated when Star Trek movies assume that you have to go by Saturn and the Moon on the way to the Earth. Didn't the writers realize that the path of the Milky Way in the sky is tilted with respect to the ecliptic?
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Citizens in the Gulf Coast are waking up powerless.... is this somehow different than on any other day?
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
This is supposed to be a site that is News for Nerds. A weak hurricane or strong tropical storm hitting the gulf coast is not news, it is weather and in no way is it nerdy. And not particularly significant unless you happen to live there.
Power outages and hurricanes are normal events. They happen every year. Finally - Harvey hit the Texas coast in late August. Not 3 weeks ago.
Get better editors.
We just absorbed our biggest hurricane hit in nearly a decade and were without power for a week. When they're weaker than expected, it can setup unreasonable expectations for the next one. People are less likely to evacuate, less likely to take warnings seriously. "We evacuated last time and it fizzled."
What you "know" about hurricanes can work against you in the future.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The strength of the hurricane in any particular place is not a straightforward function of atmospheric energy. For example many Cape Verde hurricanes weaken to tropical storms by the time they hit the US; it's not because they interact with other weather systems which are also driven by atmospheric and ocean energy.
I understand that the notion AGW == stronger hurricanes hitting the US "stands to reason", but the model support is weak on that point. What models are almost unequivocal on is significantly higher rainfall. We saw what that looks like with Harvey. Harvey weakened dramatically after landfall, but still delivered devastating rainfall to places that saw relatively little wind damage. This is consistent with what happened in Katrina; almost nobody was killed by wind, but flooding and its aftermath killed something like 1800 people.
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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.
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There may very well be AGW, but hurricanes aren't proof of it.
Well, there is, but you're correct.
The other day I was reading an article [WARNING: Annoying advertisementt] on National Geographic's website which was talking about the storm. I found this phrase somewhat annoying:
So, it wasn't enough last year. The tipping point was this year?
It sort of reminds me of the meme, "I'm not saying it's aliens...but it's aliens." "I'm not saying it's climate change, but it's climate change."
Even though scientists--y'know, smart people that we should consider listening to--say that a single event cannot be attributed to climate change, we're going to say it anyway. Because, hey, what do scientists know? Amirite?
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.
Hurricane season has just begun and we're already setting records. Fastest, biggest, strongest, most rainfall.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My point is the best way to handle a story idea like this is a suspenseful thriller. I was a few years off on that though; the 70s were the heyday of "diaster" films which are primarily visual spectacle. 1970 was a pivotal year. The same year that saw Colossus, the Forbin Project also saw Airport, that kicked off the disaster-film fad.
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Conveniently for you, you start talking about "atmospheric energy."
Fortunately for me, I know the difference between bullshit and wild honey.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Well that's what global warming is. It's not a uniform warming ot the globe, it's an increase in energy content of the troposphere and upper ocean.
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Cause they can trigger hurricanes, too, you know.
Oh, come on, now.
You can't bullshit a bullshitter.
You're avoiding deep warm water -- the biggest contributor.
Why?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I'm not. Warm water is what the models say are going to drive the greater precipitation.
I also think there will be *specific* incidents where warm water creates a US landfall where one wouldn't otherwise have happened (e.g. the Harvey scenario). We just don't have any reliable evidence that the rate of landfalls in the US will be greater, and the evidence that the rate of hurricane formation will increase isn't there either. That's because a hurricane forming and staying together is result of chaotic interaction with other weather systems which will also become more powerful.
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Animals eat food, which is used to generate energy inefficiently. That raises their temperature above their surroundings. What makes an animal warm blooded is that it has a temperature regulating mechanism which causes even more energy to be used to maintain a relatively constant temperature.
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Atlantic hurricane season (wikipedia): It was originally the time frame when the tropics were monitored routinely for tropical cyclone activity, and was originally defined as from June 15 through October 31.[7] Over the years, the beginning date was shifted back to June 1, while the end date was shifted to November 15,[5] before settling at November 30 by 1965.
We're >2/3 of the way through hurricane season and 4 weeks beyond the historical peak (Sept. 10).
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Precipitation is one element of the equation.
Of more concern is the source of the heat engine that produces that cause/effect.
It's the deep water temperature.
Hurricanes cannot ramp up if the surface temperature is less than 80-81 degrees (fair and height).
The determent for strength, though, is the supply of deep warm water.
That's why most hurricanes downsize in strength by as much as one category in the Gulf of Mexico, from New Orleans, westward.
Topology maps show a (relatively) shallow coastline from there on down to Corpus Christi, and the lack of deep water chokes off the heat source.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Yes, but that heat cuts both ways; it both creates hurricanes and destroys them. That's why you can't necessarily conclude that they'll be more frequent.
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Well not quite that correct. This succession of hurricanes would be indicative of global warming but not definitive of proof. That would require repeated seasons of large hurricane numbers, not necessarily every year but a definite cycle of large numbers of destructive hurricanes over say a decade. Don't worry all indications are, you will get them, so hold on to your roofs. The off switch is a lot harder to use than people think and consider even if we reached for it now, it is going to get worse before it get's better. What happens in Russia now, as well as of course Canada and Greenland, turning from methane sinks to extreme methane producers, well, things could get a whole lot worse a whole lot faster but at least after a decade or so of extreme chaos it would settle down to a more regular carbon climate change rate and likely cool for a bit, not to current of course, more a humid mess. For hurricanes to be the measure of global warming would be indicative it is too late to prevent severe disruption and how severe seems to depend upon now panicky we get to drive corrective measures.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I live in Wisconsin but we lost power for 3-4 days because of a tornado on more than 1 occassion and here's how it really goes. Not to be rude or arrogant, just being 100% real, the people with weeks of electricity-free foods to eat, a water filter, and a generator, solar array, or a car + high wattage inverter were just fine and the not so responsible people who pretend catastrophes will never happen to them were in big trouble. This is why I consider myself sort of a prepper, although not for the end of the world, just for real stuff that really happens. I just watched a few youtube vids, bought like $100 worth of stuff, and tada all set for massively bad weather occurrences. FEMA agrees with me that everyone should at least take basic steps like this. So everyone complaining about how bad the situation is, it's bad BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T PREPARE! That or their entire house was destroyed. But most are just simply without power.
Your post contains irony.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I give up. You obviously know more than the IPCC and your awesome physical intuition beats the hell out of their computer models.
There. That was irony.
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An entire "hurricane season" isn't a "single event". A single hurricane during a season is, but it seems your equating the entire season to a "single event". Oh, and that's not really a "meme", but is actually a phrase off of "Ancient Aliens" that is said repeatedly by Giorgio A. Tsoukalos. More often said on the show is "Ancient Alien theorists say yes"; because apparently they NEVER say no.
I donâ(TM)t understand one point. If hurricanes are getting stronger, wouldnâ(TM)t tropical storms get stronger also, thus pushing more of them into hurricane status? That would result in more hurricanes. Or is hurricane strength implemented with a byte so it rolls over at 256 mph?
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I like to imagine God sitting in the Atlantic flicking hurricanes at the US and muttering 'still don't believe in global warming, huh?'
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
As usual, the utilities count meters as customers. The actual number of people without power is likely around 300,000.
Weather is chaotic. This means that we have the storms we have partly because we have global warming. If we didn't, we'd have different storms. Any weather event can be attributed partly to global warming.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes