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Hurricanes Are Moving More Slowly, Which Means More Damage (npr.org)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Hurricanes are moving more slowly over both land and water, and that's bad news for communities in their path. In the past 70 years, tropical cyclones around the world have slowed down 10 percent, and in some regions of the world, the change has been even more significant, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. That means storms are spending more time hanging out, battering buildings with wind and dropping more rain. "The slowdown over land is what's really going to effect people," says James Kossin, the author of the study and a tropical cyclone specialist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He points to Hurricane Harvey's effect on Houston as an example of what slower storms can mean for cities. "Hurricane Harvey last year was a real outlier in terms of the amount of rain it dropped," he explains. "And the amount of rain it dropped was due, almost entirely, to the fact that it moved so slowly."
More damage where they hit, but doesn't that also mean you have more time to evacuate people to get out of the path. In theory a slower moving hurricane may mean more damage but should it not mean less human fatalities? At least in places that have the financial ability to move people out the path.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
After 70 years, I expect to be moving slower too.
Man slashdot can't stop carrying this garbage. If the hurricanes were fast moving the liberals would blame it there fantastical religion of global warming.
That's why it changed from "Global Warming" to "Climate Change". Any event meets the model and requires that we stop using any fuels
Its funny how liberals constantly say there is no objective good or bad and everything is shades of gray but global warming is like Satan. There is absolutely nothing good that it does, its bad in every conceivable way even in ways that are logically contradictory in different stories. Even when they talk about stuff like black holes or the extinction of the human race they bring up the good it can do but Global warming is 100% evil.
The real casualty is Trump's dignity as he tries to corral the wispy masses swirling furiously around him on the tarmac
With the AGW doctrine of climate change causing more, and more damaging, hurricanes having been shot down by the historical record, the climate catastrophists have kicked increased hurricane strength and frequency as a doom-and-gloom bellweather to the kerb, and have picked 'slower-moving hurricanes causing more damage' as the newest tool to drive fear of 'climate change', since the population doesn't consider climate change to be a significant concern relative to others.
Very slow storms can cause devastation by increased rainfall, as Harvey did, but because hurricane damage increases exponentially with wind speed: ...faster storms get increasingly dangerous more quickly with the extra wind speed that the leading quarter gets from hurricane speed added to ground speed than any "savings" from decreased time to pass by. The great New York hurricane of 1938 was only a Category 2 when it struck Long Island, but was moving unusually fast because of being squeezed between two adjacent weather systems that shot it forward like a watermelon seed. The summed wind velocity at the point of landfall made it as destructive as a Category 5.
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/t...
We noticed already. But thanks for pointing that out.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
on the internet for money as Trump gets ready to get butt fucked in Federal Prison.
there was no way to accurately track and measure hurricane velocity 70 years ago. through the 60s there were sporadically weather satellites each of which did not last very long. in the 70s and beyond, yes I'll believe claims of hurricane tracking/velocity
Actually, global warming is good for many people, plants and animals. In the past, the periods of global warming are when life thrived, biodiversity exploded and the ecologies expanded.
In contrast, periods of global cooling resulted in die backs and extinctions.
We are coming out of a global cooling period that was punctuated by some mini-ice ages as they are termed.
Global warming is benefiting people and ecologies who live in northern climates where the world's warming benefits life.
The problem, to humans, and specifically liberals, is that they built homes in urban areas which tend to be near oceans and other bodies of water that, particularly the oceans, are rising. When their very permanent homes go under water they get upset.
There have been a few studies that clearly delineated how there are people who are going to benefit from global warming but these are not exciting ideas so the media doesn't publicize them much. The media prefers FUD - Fear Uncertainty and Doubt - reporting since that sells more clicks and copies.
(By the way, I'm not particularly liberal or conservative but rather a scientist and farmer. I take the issues as they come rather than following dogma.)
It is "affect people" not "effect people," unless you are in the movie business talking about people working in special effects.
Takes time for alt.right generated hurricanos to smash alt.left slut-skins. Progg-folks bury so deep in the mud even a virile male twister needs to just gouge and gouge before bones are uncovered.
Maybe we should not have erected millions of gian windmills all over the place to harvest "free" "renewable" energy by slowing down the natural air circulation of the planet.
Nothing's free. A windmill put into a smooth flow of air gets spun by slowing that air down and making it turbulent.
I'm asserting this mostly tounge-in-cheek... but just mostly. (there IS probably an issue there, but not likely enough to DIRECTLY slow hurricaines - though with that whole chaos theory butterfly wing flap argument...)
"In the past 70 years, tropical cyclones around the world have slowed down 10 percent"
"That means storms are spending more time hanging out, battering buildings with wind and dropping more rain."
So... If, in this simplified model, total damage = time spent under a storm, then why are they not mentioning the biggest factor? How many storms/year?
In middle school math terms:
If Bobby got 10 storms last year, and Sally got 9 storms this year that were 10% slower, how many watermelons do they have?
Translating to time spent under storms:
Bobby => 10.0, Sally => 9.9
Conclusion => slower storms * fewer storms = less total damage
Or even more compelling, after the relatively busy storm years around 07-09, the news media would simply not stop talking about how Florida would be completely destroyed within 3 years if this trend continued. There were idiots asking to redefine the scale to create a Cat6 storm that we'd be sure to see several times each year.
In the real world, however, there were relatively very few major storms over the last 10 years. In the above example, that would be like saying Bobby had a bad year with 3 storms, while Sally only got 1 storm that was 10% slower in 3 years.
Bobby => 3.0, Sally => 0.4
Same conclusion, but ooooh look! The biggest factor has nothing to do with the scare tactics they are spreading.
TLDR; This is yet another example of why I stopped paying attention to NPR years ago. They love to leave out key details to try and make your opinion for you, while still pretending to have the integrity the founders may have actually had.
Hurricane Hazel (1954) was a fast moving storm that produced a MASSIVE area of wind damage from NC to New York, followed by tremendous flooding in Toronto. This article is garbage.
I'm too lazy to RTFA. Can someone who did explain whether this...
"Hurricane Harvey last year was a real outlier in terms of the amount of rain it dropped," he explains. "And the amount of rain it dropped was due, almost entirely, to the fact that it moved so slowly."
...means total rainfall, or just rainfall per area in the affected zone (which I presume is smaller)? i.e. Is there a certain amount of rain that a cyclone or hurricane holds and it's being distributed over a smaller area, or does the slower movement somehow increase the total water volume?