Maria has been down to Cat 1 for a while and Jose's cold wake is further degrading it. Lee is still at the same strength but interacting with its own cold wake.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Pardon the triple post, but Lee has now become a major hurricane. Not that it's likely to endanger anything.
Also, I was thinking to write something about the implications that Hurricane Irma has for climate change and for the threats it brings to Florida and the Caribbean, if people are interested. We all know that climate change is supposed to make hurricanes stronger but there are some particular aspects with Irma.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Given that not just Irma got a very tell-tale boost from the increased ocean temperature this year... more like her, Harvey and Jose are going to become a fixture.
Wind sheer stopped Jose becoming quite so dangerous, but... it was a close-run thing. :/
The Atlantic just got more dangerous, peeps. And, climate change is only just revving the storm-engine up. We aren't anywhere near cruising speed, yet.
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Note: Nederland is in between Beaumont and Port Arthur in deep southeast Texas.
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
Yeah, the fingerprints of climate change are strong on that record
. To be fair however, even if windshear hadn't pulled Jose apart its course would still have kept it away from land.
Anyway, little essay incoming:
Irma and climate change
Anyhow, I think that Hurricane Irma becoming a Category 5 hurricane while in the open Atlantic east is the important story of this year. Most Cat 5 hurricanes (exceptions include the 1938 New England hurricane, Carol in 1953, Isabel, Hugo and David later) develop in the Caribbean, close to the Bahamas or in the Gulf of Mexico; as a very rough back-of-the-envelope calculation the Cat increased by one for every degree of water temperature increase and temperatures of the water in these three areas are higher. Global warming increases the water temperatures and thus can push the region favourable for development out into the Atlantic and there were some noticeable SST anomalies this year there.
A Cat 5 hurricane developing so far east is a big hazard for a couple of places. One, the small islands of the Lesser Antilles are highly vulnerable to hurricanes and difficult to assist if they get hit.
Two, the threat of a hurricane is not just the wind but also the storm surge, especially for low-lying places such as Florida. But storm surge depends on the size of the storm just as much as on its strength. Strong hurricanes such as the 1935 Labor Day hurricane or 1992's Andrew which landfall in Florida typically developed close to the peninsula and have small sizes as smaller storms spin up more quickly. A hurricane that develops farther out like Irma has more chance to grow in size with each eyewall replacement cycle and as it grows it becomes more effective at creating a storm surge.
Disaster barely avoided
Folks probably know that Irma was originally forecast to hit eastern Florida directly, with some models indicating a direct hit on Miami. I can't find any analyses of what the effect of a direct hit on Miami would have been (Miami was much smaller when the 1926 Miami hurricane hit), but conditions in the Florida straits (water temperatures of about 32 °C) at the time when Irma passed might have supported wind speeds of up to 200 mph if the storm had picked that route. This would have made Irma into the tropical cyclone with the second strongest measured sustained windspeeds and almost certainly wrought unimaginable damage to the city - if memory serves, building codes there require a building to resist only windspeeds of 185 mph and the wind pressure increases quadratically with windspeed.
As we know, a ridge pushed Irma into Cuba, thus sparing eastern Florida its worst impacts. With stronger climate change this may not happen as climate change is pushing weather systems northeastward. For all we know, just a little more climate change (say, from the lack of climate change mitigation so far) would have allowed Irma to follow the fatal cityward course (a hypothetical worst case course).
edited 29th Sep '17 1:12:57 PM by SeptimusHeap
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
After a pause, a tropical depression has formed in the Caribbean and is forecast to develop further, possibly into a tropical storm or a hurricane (which would be named Nate). It is moving north and may reach the Gulf Coast in a few days, after passing through several other countries and bays.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
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Mother Nature is really pissed off this season isn't she?
Queen of Good Things, Honest
Mother Nature is pissed off every season. She's allergic to carbon emissions and is rapidly losing patience after telling us repeatedly to get them out of her house.
edited 4th Oct '17 6:24:33 PM by TobiasDrake
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So she's having an allergy attack?
i. hear. a. sound.
More like an actual immune response.
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I foresee Hypercanes (Category 6 and above) being a common thing in the near future
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Actually a Hypercane is a whole different type of storm that is currently only hypothetical and would make a Cat 5 Hurricane look like a mild rainshower.
From the wikipedia article a hypercane would have windspeeds of over 500 mph and extend into the upper stratosphere. Mercifully, hypercanes require ocean temperatures far higher then they've ever been recorded on earth, or we are likely to get in the foreseeable future even with the effects of global warming.
If they were to redesign the Hurricane scale to be open-ended, I would expect a Cat 6 to require windspeeds not much higher than 200 mph.
That aside, looks like a new Tropical Depression is forming off the coast of Nicaragua. It's forcasted to make landfall in Nicaragua as a Tropical Storm, then head north into the Gulf of Mexico where it will strengthen into a hurricane and make landfall somewhere in the vicinity of the Flordia panhandle.
edited 4th Oct '17 8:11:45 PM by Falrinn
No longer a forum herald
I foresee sensationalism being debunked in the near future. 
As I noted previously, Category 6 would require sustained wind speed capable of tearing up pavement and concrete. That's north of 275 mph (based on accounts of F5 tornadoes doing such), which is nearly twice as strong as the requirements for Category 5. The ocean would have to be a lot warmer to regularly churn out such things, much more than the expected two to three degree increase by 2100. Such a thing would be a once-in-a-century fluke, even taking the global warming into account.
And going beyond that? You'd be looking at the hurricane just disintegrating anything and everything it hit - which requires sustained wind speeds north of 500 mph. And xkcd helpfully confirms that the ocean temps needed for that are 50 Celsius...basically, humanity would not be around to classify a Category 7.
Edit: Partially ![[nja]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/user_ninja_2074.png "[nja]"){kind=small}
'd.
edited 4th Oct '17 8:16:15 PM by TotemicHero
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)
The problem with defining a "Category 6" is that you'd need to observe the impact of a strong Cat 5 on a well built city to judge the impact, and that is rare. This year incidentally was the closest we got to such an instance - some early forecasts indicated that Irma would have reached windspeeds of 200 mph while crossing the Florida Straits and hit Miami with such winds. If it had felled skyscrapers and demolished hurricane-proofed buildings with winds then you could make a case.
Yes, this year's hurricane season is much stronger than average. I don't recall why that is.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Nate is up to a quick start seems like; 22 fatalities already in Central America. It is expected to roll through Yucatan and the Mississippi Delta area and may become a major hurricane on the way.
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In addition to this: Hurricane Warnings have been issued from Grand Isle, Louisiana to the Alabama/Florida border and a Storm Surge Warning has been issued from Morgan City, Louisiana to the Alabama/Florida border.
Metro New Orleans and the surrounding lakes only have Tropical Storm Warnings at the moment.
edited 6th Oct '17 8:54:33 AM by tclittle
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
Nate has almost reached the mouth of the Mississippi as a Category 1 hurricane. It may still reach Cat 2 but landfall will occur soon and the system is showing ambiguous signs regarding its intensity.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
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Nate makes landfall near the mouth of the Mississippi as a Category 1 storm.
LOCATION...29.0N 89.2W
ABOUT 10 MI...15 KM SW OF THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER
ABOUT 100 MI...160 KM S OF BILOXI MISSISSIPPI
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...85 MPH...140 KM/H
PRESENT MOVEMENT...N OR 350 DEGREES AT 20 MPH...31 KM/H
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...982 MB...29.00 INCHES
edited 7th Oct '17 5:14:42 PM by tclittle
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
Looks like in comparison to last month's Cavalcade of Terror, Nate has been fairly mild on the Gulf Coast. On the other hand, it did cause severe flooding in Central America.
There is another tropical depression south of the Azores that might develop into a storm (which would be named Ophelia).
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
edited 9th Oct '17 7:59:22 AM by kkhohoho
Ophelia is now officially a hurricane.
To keep tally of this year's hurricanes:
- Franklin in early August, landfall in Mexico but no fatalities.
- Gert also in early August, no landfall. These storms didn't get much attention, but then...
- Harvey, massive flooding and a Cat 4 landfall in the US.
- Irma, on its own as energetic as a whole hurricane season. Utter devastation in Barbuda, St.Martin, Virgin Islands and severe damage in Cuba and Florida. Florida barely avoided an unimaginable catastrophe, Irma is the second windiest hurricane in the Atlantic and stayed at top strength longer than any tropical cyclone.
- Jose, no landfall, but extremely energetic and long lasting.
- Katia, some damage in Mexico but mainly remarkable because it was a hurricane simultaneously to Irma and Jose.
- Lee, stopped and started and became briefly a Cat 3 hurricane.
- Maria, most intense this year (and tenth-strongest overall in the Atlantic) by air pressure. Total devastation in Puerto Rico and Dominica which was caught off guard by Maria's extremely rapid intensification. Also very energetic.
- Nate, its precursor caused major flooding and destruction in Central America. Fastest moving hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico.
- Ophelia, presently active.
If memory serves, the last time ten consecutive tropical storms all became hurricanes was in 1893.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Ophelia is now up to Cat 2. In the future (but probably weaker) it will run towards Europe, with the Azores and Ireland especially at risk.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
100 km per hour fits within Cat. 2, right? Because that is what our meteorologists here are expecting in regards to Açores. 7 of the 9 islands are or will be soon in red alert mode (if it slows down, it will change to orange alert mode), especially during the morning and afternoon tomorrow.
edited 13th Oct '17 12:59:22 PM by Quag15
100 km/h is technically tropical storm strength, but then the Saffir Simpson scale concerns itself mainly with winds in the storm's centre and not at the far field as would be relevant here.
Incidentally, Ophelia has now become a Category 3 hurricane, although probably only briefly.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Hmm, getting some conflicting information. The dam apparently hasn't failed yet...
Also, an interesting article about the economic background of Irma and Maria
:
After Hurricane Irma swiped Puerto Rico in early September, and with Maria dealing another devastating blow this past week, I’ve thought back repeatedly to this conversation. What conditions would lead someone to view a natural disaster as a boost for the economy? Who benefits from the vulnerability and precarity of those exposed to storms?
One particularity of this year’s hurricane season is that many of the societies that have been hit are not sovereign nations but rather places with diverse and shifting arrangements with their colonial centers. They include Guadeloupe and St. Martin — where residents are French citizens with European passports and representatives in the French National Assembly — as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, where residents are American citizens but can neither vote in national elections nor have voting representation in Congress. They also encompass places like Anguilla — technically a self-governing state, but one whose defense and economic policy is determined by the British government and whose residents are “overseas citizens” of the United Kingdom.
The paradox of these Caribbean societies is that their economic challenges are often masked by an appearance of prosperity. Despite their relatively high incomes, residents of places like Guiana, an overseas department of France, and Puerto Rico struggle with inflated prices for basic goods because of steep transportation costs from their colonial centers and restrictive legislation, such as the Jones Act, which limits their ability to engage in more favorable trade. This means many materials necessary for storm preparation — storm windows, generators, battery-powered electronics — carry steep price tags that are prohibitive for many. This spring, residents of Guiana sustained an 11-day mass strike to protest the economic hardship and social insecurity experienced by residents who feel ignored and abandoned by their government across the ocean.
Puerto Rico already had a higher rate of income inequality than any U.S. state, and it has only been made worse by tax incentives used to lure investors at the expense of a depleted public sector. Puerto Rico’s Act No. 22 allows wealthy investors to evade federal and local income tax by spending a minimum of 183 nights a year on the island. These types of initiatives promote the arrival of wealthy retirees and part-time Caribbean residents, who are able to erect multimillion-dollar mansions complete with hurricane-proof bunkers, while many of those born and raised in these societies must rely on public infrastructure that has been deeply eroded to service foreign debt and provide tax breaks.
As an unincorporated territory of the United States, Puerto Rico qualifies for aid programs including Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance. However, with a poverty rate nearly double that of Mississippi, failing infrastructure that has been neglected for more than a decade and a public sector that has been increasingly dismantled in response to the debt crisis, the island was already in a state of emergency long before the storm hit. This is why Irma, a weaker storm than Maria, managed to knock out power for almost the entire island and cause significant damage — not coincidentally in areas that are subject to long-standing issues of racial and social marginalization, violence and precarity, such as Vieques, Culebra and Loiza.
Natural disasters and moments of social and political upheaval mark the few occasions when these marginal citizens fleetingly appear in the national consciousness. In these moments, it’s common to hear debate about why these societies remain tied to their colonial centers. Why do these remnants of empire persist? What benefits do they provide? How can their metropoles “afford” what are seen by many as “expensive” imperial debris?
The most obvious answer is geopolitics: These far-flung territories provide military bases, satellite launching centers and footholds in important terrains. Less obvious is the fact that these societies are protected markets for national corporations. American companies such as Walmart and Walgreens have more stores per square mile in Puerto Rico than anywhere else in the world. Their prevalence is due in part to the deep subsidies they receive from the local government, which channels federal funds to help pay for training and payroll. The local government attempted to retain some of these profits by raising taxes on goods brought into Puerto Rico from foreign (including U.S.) distributors, but Walmart, the biggest private employer on the island, sued and threatened to leave.
Places like Puerto Rico also provide important economic cover for their colonial centers. Cheaper labor pools, lax environmental protections and economic loopholes make them attractive sites for speculative investment, money laundering and tax evasion. Indeed, it was Puerto Rico’s unique ability to issue triple tax exempt bonds — subject to neither state, federal nor municipal tax — which made it so irresistible to U.S. investors, leading in no small part to the current crisis.
The federal response to Puerto Rico’s economic crisis, the much-critiqued PROMESA Act , offered no solutions to the island’s problems. Rather than tackling the roots of Puerto Rico’s economic plight and the social fragility produced by a decade-long recession, it imposed a fiscal control board focused on short-term austerity policies with no long-term economic vision for the island beyond restoring its market rating. The policies proposed include furloughs, decreased wages and tax hikes for the working poor, coupled with tax breaks and other incentives to help lure back American investors.
Part of why the PROMESA bill was so shortsighted was fear in Washington that the legislation would be viewed as a federal bailout . For many U.S. lawmakers, apparently, Puerto Ricans are not entitled to the same standard of living, health-care access and economic security as mainland citizens.
In anticipation of Hurricane Maria, Trump tweeted that help would be available to Puerto Rico. Meanwhile, the fiscal oversight board issued a statement that it would accelerate reconstruction projects as needed. Emergency funds will soon flow to the island, as the financial manager I’d interviewed predicted.. But if history is any indication, they will do little to alleviate long-standing disparities or to remedy the conditions that put Puerto Rico at greatest risk. More likely, the expedited management of emergency money will only serve to fuel the drive for increased privatization and the gutting of public services. As was evident after the ground shook in Haiti, it is long-term structural problems that turns a disaster into a catastrophe. Vulnerability is not simply a product of natural conditions; it is a political state and a colonial condition.