Weather Chat Megathread

[Just Jim]

27 minutes ago, tater said:

Wow. I didn't realize you were on the West coast, I thought you were central.

Central as in north/south, but yeah, right on the west coast, about an hour north of Tampa, just off of US19

[tater]

Luckily Cuba wrecked Irma. 

 

[Green Baron]

28 minutes ago, tater said:

 

I read the link, but previous stuff I read said that wind speed was measured as a 2 minute constant speed (sustained without dipping below whatever). Perhaps it has changed over time.

Other "companies" may have other definitions. DWD (German weatherfrogs) measures 10m above ground and obstacles have to be at least 10 times the height away. That excludes most hobby meteorologists ;-)

In general all of them know how to calibrate their instruments and where they are.

@ProtoJeb21: i admire your enthusiasm but predictions have the problem that they are difficult, especially those regarding the future ;-)

[tater]

NOAA might calibrate their instruments, but they don't follow their own rules about placement. I see several every day, and only one of them is placed according to their rules (away from anything man-made a sufficient distance). Most are under 2m from concrete surfaces, often near walls.

for Jim 

 

[SaturnianBlue]

23 minutes ago, ProtoJeb21 said:

Cuba definitely is taking a toll on Irma's convective structure, but both the NHC and GFS models predict Irma returning to strong Category 4 (MAYBE Cat 5) intensity by later today and Sunday.

Meanwhile, Jose may become a Category 5 around Bermuda in a few days. Some models suggest the possibility of a New England landfall at Category 4 or 3 intensity. Oh no...

Irma is down to category 3 status, but the warm SST could strengthen it back to category 4. Even if the intensity remains stable, the storm surge could still be a very big threat. 

Any possibility of a New England strike by Jose is still over 10 days out—10 days ago, Irma had just formed. I would say that model predictions beyond a 5 or so days out shouldn't be taken too seriously.

[Green Baron]

@tater, then the one is used for for official data and the others maybe for finding out about parameters for corrections of obstacles, different materials, insolation, moisture etc. blabla.

Mayhaps you underestimate your fellow weatherfrogs ;-)

[tater]

An official one is at the airport, and even that one is not 100 feet from any concrete. It's under 2 car lengths from pavement on two sides.

[tater]

 

[ProtoJeb21]

1 hour ago, SaturnianBlue said:

Irma is down to category 3 status, but the warm SST could strengthen it back to category 4. Even if the intensity remains stable, the storm surge could still be a very big threat. 

Any possibility of a New England strike by Jose is still over 10 days out—10 days ago, Irma had just formed. I would say that model predictions beyond a 5 or so days out shouldn't be taken too seriously.

I know that 10-day forecasts are quite unreliable for hurricanes, but since Jose will be stalling off the Carolina coast for a while it just gets me worried.

1 hour ago, tater said:

Luckily Cuba wrecked Irma. 

 

That's quite unexpected. All Irma did was just TOUCH a teensy bit of the Cuban coast, and now it looks like it had passed over a large island like Hispaniola.

36 minutes ago, tater said:

 

Well...say goodbye to the Florida Keys.

Edited September 9, 2017 by ProtoJeb21

[tater]

Gonna be a rough day, that's for sure.

The bright side is how few lives have been lost, honestly. The leeward islands driven over at max intensity might have a lot of damage, but few fatalities.

Its all about preparedness. TX and hopefully post-Andrew FL are substantially more competent than NOLA.

[TheKosanianMethod]

VA is in a state of emergency. No one has any idea what is happening. I heard that we could get heavy rain and isolated tornadoes,  then I just heard high winds and heavy rain. Good luck to those in Florida.

Edited September 9, 2017 by TheKosanianMethod

[tater]

I've heard a few meteorologists talk about Irma "raking" Cuba. By this they mean scraping along, which is certainly a legit use of the word... myself, I saw the impact in the center of FL, then straight north as "raking" in the age of sail sense of firing down the length of the target as you pass astern (or ahead, by stern galleries softer targets).

[LordFerret]

3 hours ago, tater said:

That link says the anemometer is 1.5m above ground. Model calculations are not observations, however. I would assume that they must measure a constant wind at 1.5m for any such reading to be official. What happens when an instrument is fine and accurate up to some velocity, but any higher gust wrecks it? Gusts don't count, sustained winds do. The storm could be at one level, and a higher gust destroys instrument.

Clearly tree height is a critical height, given that trees cause a lot of damage, and roughly scale to small building heights (high-rises are built to better standards, usually).

 

- snip -

What is with the housing market in FL? There are neighborhoods under a km from the ocean, and there is a network of roads, and an equal network of canals---because every house needs water access, right? This in a hurricane zone. I certainly hope the insurance is set up in such a way that the taxpayers are not responsible for people's housing choice to make sure the structure is as likely as possible to flood.

It's the same around many towns here. People want to build out on the water. When it's summer and weather is great, it's really nice, pretty and all that. But it doesn't take much to wash it all away. And no, insurance is not set up as you'd think. First of all flood insurance is pretty much a Federal thing (FEMA), it's not really a state thing (state insurers offer through the Federal program - which, if you follow the money, is broke ... but, of course, the dollar is fungible, so, yea, flood insurance), so we all have to pay for it no matter what. This pretty much means any idiot can build out on the water and be assured his eventual losses will be covered. There are many people in this state who take issue with that; Though the reality of this is that it's pretty much the same situation in every coastal state. Add to that the fact that most of these homes (here in NJ) are "second homes", homes owned by people who have a primary residence elsewhere. These are homes used mainly during the summers, left idle in winter, or are rented out for additional income. This was a very big issue after Sandy, as folks who owned beach homes as their primary residence suffered more-so. It's a long story, also kind of political (sorry mods), but if you want to read more about it you can check out this link (http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/17/03/23/interactive-map-detailing-new-jersey-s-national-flood-insurance-payments/).

I've made loose comment about this scenario previously in this thread. It shouldn't be news to anyone living in a coastal state here in the USA.

 

3 hours ago, Just Jim said:

It's insane actually. And constantly growing. The area I'm in is constantly expanding, and I know of several major building projects in the works.

- snip -

Likewise the Jersey shore. For an example, Rt.70, which runs across the state; Back in the 70's & 80's, the drive from Spring Lake out to Marlton was a single lane highway (one lane each way) with virtually nothing in-between... just forest. Now?... non-stop building, each year a new development going up.

 

49 minutes ago, ProtoJeb21 said:

- snip -

 

Well...say goodbye to the Florida Keys.

Nope, they'll rebuild again, they always do.

 

[Ten Key]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Its all about preparedness. TX and hopefully post-Andrew FL are substantially more competent than NOLA.

We'll see what happens. It's been a long time since Tampa was hit by a major hurricane, and there are a lot of older buildings that predate the post-Andrew building codes. 

[ProtoJeb21]

2 hours ago, tater said:

The leeward islands driven over at max intensity might have a lot of damage, but few fatalities.

Approximately $9.98 billion total for the Caribbean and Bahama islands, as of now. Thank goodness that the death toll hasn't been incredibly bad, but the name "Irma" is most definitely getting retired. Plus the absolute devastation the storm has caused is, IMO, by far the worst part of the storm. Frankly, it's horrifying. We're dealing with a storm that can wipe out entire islands and completely change the surrounding geography and civilizations.

[SaturnianBlue]

39 minutes ago, ProtoJeb21 said:

Approximately $9.98 billion total for the Caribbean and Bahama islands, as of now. Thank goodness that the death toll hasn't been incredibly bad, but the name "Irma" is most definitely getting retired. Plus the absolute devastation the storm has caused is, IMO, by far the worst part of the storm. Frankly, it's horrifying. We're dealing with a storm that can wipe out entire islands and completely change the surrounding geography and civilizations.

In my opinion, the damage to the Leeward islands would be enough to get the name Irma retired, whether or not it hit Florida.

Also, there's webcam footage of people taking selfies down in the Florida Keys, even though big waves are already crashing in...

Edit: Irma looks to be strengthening again...

Edited September 9, 2017 by SaturnianBlue

[tater]

People voluntarily staying in the keys are nuts.

[ProtoJeb21]

27 minutes ago, SaturnianBlue said:

In my opinion, the damage to the Leeward islands would be enough to get the name Irma retired, whether or not it hit Florida.

Also, there's webcam footage of people taking selfies down in the Florida Keys, even though big waves are already crashing in...

Edit: Irma looks to be strengthening again...

100% that Irma will be retired. 

Yep, pressure has dropped another 3 mbar, right on schedule with the GFS forecasts.

16 minutes ago, tater said:

People voluntarily staying in the keys are nuts.

At least they'll have one hell of a story to brag about...if they survive. Let's hope they've managed to over-prepare for Irma.

[Cydonian Monk]

1 hour ago, ProtoJeb21 said:

We're dealing with a storm that can wipe out entire islands and completely change the surrounding geography and civilizations.

Exactly like every other major hurricane before it. Happens every year, sometimes multiple times per year. Retiring storm names is silly at this point. Storm names are silly to begin with. I sometimes think the only reason we still name them is so we don't end up with lots of "Great Storm of 1900" (117 years ago yesterday, btw), "The Homestead Storm", "The Rockport Storm", etc. 

[Green Baron]

Major hurricanes did not happen every year, multiples even less of course, and even less make landfall. But they are getting more and more. Source below.

Nice to view: the past six years have been relatively moderate (two majors), leading to the "all not that bad" conclusion of climate change deniers.

Don't try to find patterns ;-) Minds superior to ours have tried ... :-)

Edited September 9, 2017 by Green Baron

[ProtoJeb21]

38 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Major hurricanes did not happen every year, multiples even less of course, and even less make landfall. But they are getting more and more. Source below.

Nice to view: the past six years have been relatively moderate (two majors), leading to the "all not that bad" conclusion of climate change deniers.

Don't try to find patterns ;-) Minds superior to ours have tried ... :-)

Looks like a multi-year cycle of highs and lows, with the median generally increasing over the decades.

Currently, Irma is still a Category 3, but its pressure has dropped significantly - 933 mbar, from about 941 mbar as of the 11:00 am advisory.

[Cydonian Monk]

Ok, fine. Major hurricanes don't happen every year. But the hysteria and fear mongering that's going on around them in the media (and in this thread) is causing more damage than the storms. Hurricanes and such storms are nothing new, they cause damage, and people need to not be idiots around them. Get away from low-lying areas, don't drive into water, stay in storm-rated structures that were built with more modern building codes in mind. 

Inciting the entire state of Florida (or Texas) to get out on the roads and get stuck there when the storm hits is irresponsible at best and criminally negligent at worst.

[Green Baron]

so we have killed 25 people levelled  several islands and caused 10s of billions damage ?

And are just warming up ?

sorry am on mobile

yeah, good luck of course

[tater]

What is the correction for storms they didn't detect?

Minus sat imagery, what mechanism did they use to know they had a TD/TS/hurricane in the deep ocean that never made landfall?

It's no surprise at all the the numbers ramp up after the common use of jet/intercontinental aircraft.

To compare with pre-sat data, you need to demonstrate that they had 100% ocean coverage capable of detecting the 3 types of storms and sorting them. That means calibrated weather ships spread around such that missing a storm was impossible. Otherwise, data before sats needs uncertainty.

 

Even if the incidence has risen (which that graph does not support as per my comments above), then you need to demonstrate that there is no pattern over a multi-century timeframe (or longer) that fits other such patterns (what was hurricane activity like coming out of the previous ice age, for example?).

Also, we've already established that wind speeds could not even be measured before the cup anemometer, so no data earlier than 1850 is even possible to look at storms that happened to make landfall over weather stations short of really big storms that leave sedimentary proxies.

As you go back, the error bars get bigger, and bigger. What is the uncertainty on the number of storms that were never seen in 1930, for example? How do you know what you don't know?

that graph doesn't  even have error bars (unneeded in modern times because we observe all cyclones).

PS-even NOAA says attribution is premature: https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/

I have no dog in the fight, I just think it's sloppy to draw conclusions with certainty on very limited data sets. When these guys get something as accurately predictive as even the Standard Model, I'm all ears. LSU has an interesting paper on paleoclimate reconstruction using seaside lakes and storm surge overwash sand deposits that suggests that major landfalls have been lower in modern times than they were in the past, and that we're lucky to have lived in this quiescent period. That paper also suggests that it might be bad if climate change brought us back to the "bad old days." That said, apparently the "bad old days" managed to occur without human assistance, though I'm certainly not advocating we try for that outcome.  

Just curious, do we get to blame the 4324 day major hurricane drought on people, too?  Wonder if it would be worth the trade off... a decade with none, then a few in a row, vs one every few years?

Edited September 10, 2017 by tater

[tater]

Still heading wnw, when is this beast gonna turn? I'd say it can't go into the gulf, but it's been breaking rules for days now...