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Get your finger pointers ready...
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| Shakka |
| Rita just upgraded to a Category 5 and it's still way out in the GOM. They're now saying that this could be worse than Katrina depending on where it hits. Is the aid lined up? Have people evacuated? Are we ready to blame Dubya yet? This could get ugly. Fill up your tanks now. |
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| Lepanto |
| there are over 80 buses at Gavelstan (sp) Texas awaiting orders to begin evacuation along with addition 30 buses and 10 aircrafts. |
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| Chris Larkin |
The Mayor of Houston has ordered an evacuation -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4261166.stm
The question is, how many will leave? Obviously, after they all saw what happened in New Orleans, there will be a bit more of an impetus for the poor to get as far away as possible as soon as possible, but then again they might stay for some good old lootin'. Or, if you live in a poor white area, fetching supplies, and neglecting to pay for them. Either or.
However, as Houston isn't below sea level, it's pretty unlikely that the whole place will be flooded for too long. On the other hand, with all that oil production around there, and quite a few major refineries, I think we could be feeling this right around the world.
My aunt and uncle used to live in Houston, but now live in Salisbury, Maryland. I think they'll be safe from this one.
So basically, if we can have a bit more competence from all levels of government this time, it should be okay.
However two things -
1) Are we finally ready to hear about global warming, Dubya? This is what's likely making this year's hurrincanes so shockingly powerful.
2) Something like this is a great opportunity for Opus' new best friend to go and have pointless protests with her discrimination chums. This will give him more time to think of something suitably nasty for her. ;) |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by Chris Larkin
1) Are we finally ready to hear about global warming, Dubya? This is what's likely making this year's hurrincanes so shockingly powerful.
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I sincerely doubt global warming is the reason this year's hurricane season has produced two whoppers. Is the climate that drastically different from what it was just 5 years ago? At best, maybe marginally so. I'd argue more to the point that hurricanes, like many other phenomena, are a cyclical system, and many have already forecasted well in advance, that we are in a 10-year cycle of more intense hurricane activity. There have been plenty of incredibly destructive hurricanes decades ago when the global climate was far different.
But to the point, we have had 2 catastrophically damaging hurricanes within a month and both(assuming Rita does) have hit extremely vulnerable, yet valuable locations. |
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| HardTranceProd |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
Rita just upgraded to a Category 5 and it's still way out in the GOM.
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what is GOM? |
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| Spacey Orange |
| quote: | Originally posted by HardTranceProd
what is GOM? |
Gulf of Mexico |
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| St_Andrew |
It seems like they have the situation under control this time. But who knows, I kinda had that feeling last time too, but it became pretty obvious pretty fast that time they didn't...
Anyway, let's hope this one calms down or strike somewhere where it does minimal damage. |
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| Q5echo |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
I sincerely doubt global warming is the reason this year's hurricane season has produced two whoppers. Is the climate that drastically different from what it was just 5 years ago? At best, maybe marginally so. I'd argue more to the point that hurricanes, like many other phenomena, are a cyclical system, and many have already forecasted well in advance, that we are in a 10-year cycle of more intense hurricane activity. There have been plenty of incredibly destructive hurricanes decades ago when the global climate was far different.
But to the point, we have had 2 catastrophically damaging hurricanes within a month and both(assuming Rita does) have hit extremely vulnerable, yet valuable locations. |
you might find this interesting
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/Deadliest_Costliest.shtml |
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| occrider |
| quote: |
Storm frenzy is not an anomaly, but a phase
Atlantic current may be creating a hurricane hatchery. And the cycle may last 20 years.
By BILL COATS, Times Staff Writer
Published September 13, 2005
Back in 1995, surface waters in the north Atlantic Ocean warmed up a smidgen.
The change was less than a degree, but it marked the first time in a quarter-century that waters were consistently warmer than average.
Storm experts warned of more hurricanes.
But nobody grasped the sweeping change that Mother Nature had signaled.
The 10 years since then have been the stormiest decade in the recorded history of the Atlantic basin. Mitch tore up Central America. Four hurricanes hammered Florida last year. Katrina decimated the Gulf Coast.
Now climatologists say frenzied hurricane seasons will be a fact of life for the next 10 to 20 years, part of a lengthy cycle of stormy eras followed by calmer ones.
The engine driving these cycles is called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or AMO. Scientists say it has triggered drought in the western United States while spawning hurricanes in the Atlantic.
At a time when some are theorizing that global warming may be the reason for more intense hurricane seasons, climatologists say the AMO is the real culprit.
"The consensus among hurricane researchers and forecasters is that the hurricane landfalls of 2004 resulted from the AMO, a natural cycle of hurricane activity, combined with a lapse in the incredibly good fortune of the previous 35 years," Hugh Willoughby, a hurricane researcher at Miami's Florida International University, wrote in an essay last fall.
"The effect of global warming was at most second order," he wrote, "and probably not present at all."
Mayhem, questions
Today's climate researchers owe a debt to mariners of the late 1800s.
"They would lower buckets into the water and measure the temperatures," said Thomas Delworth, a physical scientist at a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration laboratory in New Jersey.
Steamship engines used ocean water to cool steam in their condensers.
The colder the ocean, the stronger the engines ran. Chief engineers kept meticulous temperature logs, helping them predict their top speeds.
Now those logs are helping scientists unravel the cycles of the Atlantic.
After studying temperature records dating to 1854, two University of Illinois researchers reported in a 1994 edition of Nature that air and surface-water temperatures in the north Atlantic were cyclically rising, then falling, over 65 to 70 years.
William Gray, the renowned hurricane forecaster from Colorado State University, also was studying the Atlantic. The warmer surface water in 1995 prompted Gray to predict an unusually stormy hurricane season.
His warning proved too tame.
Eleven hurricanes and eight tropical storms erupted in 1995, the highest tally since 1933. Hurricane Opal, after strengthening into a major hurricane the night before it struck Pensacola Beach, inflicted $3-billion in damage.
Such mayhem prompted Gray to question his statistical analyses. He concluded the 1995 ocean warming had rendered them unreliable.
Gray began giving top emphasis to water temperatures in the Atlantic.
By 1997 his forecasts began warning of "a new era" of hurricanes.
A flurry of studies ensued.
In one, Steve Gray, an Arizona-based research associate with the U.S. Geological Survey, led a team that tracked the weather cycles backward by studying ancient tree rings from Europe and the southern United States. Healthy weather produced wide tree rings. Drought or other trauma caused narrow rings.
The climate cycles kept repeating.
"It's been working in the same way for at least five centuries or so," said Gray, whose study was published last year.
How far back might the cycles extend?
"I'll go out on a limb and say at least one or two millennia," he replied.
Climatologists had long known that ocean temperatures influence weather, earlier reinforced by the Pacific Ocean's El Nino phenomenon.
But discoveries about the AMO in the mid-1990s helped explain why certain types of weather - storms, drought and rainfall - unfold in long patterns.
Researchers learned that AMO cycles depend on how fast the surface waters of the Atlantic flow north past Greenland, chill in the Arctic wind, then sink and head back south. It's like a liquid conveyor belt.
If the conveyor belt slows, surface waters have more time to cool as they journey north. If the belt speeds up, the water stays warmer farther north. This is the AMO's warm phase, the hurricane hatchery.
Why this flow speeds up and slows down is largely a mystery. NOAA's Delworth thinks the key influence is the rhythm of the Arctic winds.
Salinity matters, too. When evaporation makes the water saltier, it is denser and quicker to sink.
Lucky Florida
Records show the AMO was cool from 1900-1925, warm from 1926-1969, cool from 1970-1994 and warm since 1995.
Climatologists look at those dates and realize a generation of Americans is virtually blind to the true threat of hurricanes, having never experienced a major hurricane firsthand, at least until last year's four Florida hurricanes.
"During the time when so few hurricanes hit North America, we as a society framed decisions about land use, construction standards and other aspects of our lives around the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico," wrote FIU's Willoughby last fall. "Built into those plans was the unstated assumption that hurricanes would continue to stay away from our shores as they had for the last third of a century."
Another expert said the hurricane seasons of the 1940s, in the heart of the last AMO warm phase, would stun today's Floridians.
"Imagine variations of 2004 occurring every year for 10 years," said Roger Pielke Jr., a University of Colorado professor who studies risk and has written a book about hurricanes.
Moreover, some researchers say records for the 1940s and earlier may undercount that era's storms because reconnaissance flights and hovering satellites still were in their infancies.
"We don't know what was going on out in the middle of the ocean," Willoughby said.
But they know Florida has been extraordinarily lucky.
"The last major storm to come through Florida, before Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992, was Hurricane Betsy in 1965, which went through the Keys," William Gray, the hurricane forecaster, told Discover Magazine in its September issue.
"Eight of the last 10 years have been very active," he said. "In fact, we've never had as much activity on the records, going back to about 1870 or so, as in the past 10 years - and yet we went from 1992 until last year with no hurricanes coming through Florida."
Troubling trend
As the 2005 hurricane season continues to rage, NOAA reports that half the nation now lives on 17 percent of the land: the coasts.
"A major hurricane - a Category 3, 4 or 5 - can't come ashore anywhere in the United States without causing a major disaster," Pielke said.
Pielke has calculated that a 1926 hurricane that ravaged Miami would create $110-billion in damage today. The 1921 hurricane that created a 15-foot tide in Oldsmar would cause $6-billion in damage, Pielke estimated.
Meanwhile, the Atlantic waters have continued to warm since the AMO switched to its warm phase in 1995, said Phil Klotzbach, research associate of forecaster Gray.
"This is the second warmest year we've ever seen over the tropical Atlantic," Klotzbach said. "It's pretty toasty out there."
http://sptimes.com/2005/09/13/Weath..._is_not_a.shtml
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| Shakka |
| quote: | | "The effect of global warming was at most second order," he wrote, "and probably not present at all." |
You ever wonder who thinks this up and then figures it out? I mean if you look at the data, we're talking about a hot-cold temperature band of about 1.75 degrees farenheit.
Do they do entropy measurements? I'd be curious to see how much "global warming" dissipates into the infinite galaxy at large?
On another note, I specifically remember Hurricane Hugo back in 1989 (Holy -16 years ago today!) It was predicted to be a very strong hurricane. I had one grandparent living in Charleston, SC and another living about 30 miles outside of Charleston. The one in Charleson rode out the storm with minor issues (Though she reported seeing "twenty foot swells going up Meeting St.") The one that lived outside of Charleston evacuated and came back to find nothing but a foundation and a completely ruined 400 acre ranch. He had pulled his boat about 1/4 mile inland and chained it to a tree. Somehow the boat survived the storm and my grandfatheer went back to his propety and lived out of his beached boat for several months, while scouring the property for remains of family heirlooms and valuables, while at the same time protecting it from looters. I went up there for a week during Summer Break that year to help look for salvageable or insured wreckage. Looking back, it seems so crazy to think about how wild that experience was--we just seemed to survive and take it in stride.
Another to remember is that our detection and mesaurement systems are much better and more accurate today. Information sharing is exponentially more fluid than it has ever been thanks to the digital/technology revolution/"Information Age". And, oh my gawd, the ing media!
Wow...I'm ramblin':o
Hugo Strike
| quote: | | Hurricane Hugo which struck the U.S. Virgin Islands, Vieques, Culebra, and the eastern half of Puerto Rico in 1989 was also very destructive, leaving $3 billion in damage in its wake. |
GEORGE BUSH DOESN'T CARE ABOUT SOUTH CAROLINA!
Damn, here's what the official report said back then. I'm tellin' you this baby was a killer CAT 5 in some parts.
| quote: | Hurricane Hugo, one of the most powerful storms of the century, proved to be a double catastrophe
for the United States. Its course through the Caribbean and the Carolinas caused untold suffering and
the largest economic loss that this country has ever experienced from a hurricane. Our thoughts and
prayers reach out to those courageous individuals who suffered Hugo’s fury and are now struggling to
rebuild their lives. Furthermore, I congratulate all of those in NOAA and the National Weather Service
who, in many instances, disregarded personal concerns to ensure that the warnings and the response
to the storm were of the highest order. Their dedication and professionalism shall ever inspire us.
Dr. Elbert W. Friday, Jr.
May 1990 |
Source
Amazing how this sounds like a drop in the bucket by today's terms. Inflation is everywhere!
| quote: | The Storm
NOAA pronounced 1989’s Hurricane Hugo as the strongest storm to strike the United States in 20
years. The NWS, through its National Hurricane Center (NHC), reported that Hugo smashed into the
Charleston, South Carolina, area minutes before midnight, September 22, with winds estimated at 135
MPH in Bulls Bay north of the city. Four days earlier, the storm crossed the U.S. Virgin Islands and
Puerto Rico with equal force. See Appendix A for a summary of Hugo’s recorded and estimated
surface wind speeds.
During the hurricane’s approach to the Leeward Islands, a NOAA research aircraft east of Guadeloupe
measured winds of 160 MPH and a central pressure of 27.1 inches or 918 millibars (mb). This
qualified Hugo as a Category 5 storm -- the highest -- on the Saffir-Simpson Scale (see Appendix B).
The storm was rated as Category 4 when it pounded the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and South
Carolina. Although rainfall was moderate in the Caribbean and on the U.S. mainland, Hugo produced
record storm tides of up to 20 feet in South Carolina.
The hurricane was the Nation’s costliest in terms of monetary losses but not in lives lost. Forty-nine
directly-related storm fatalities were recorded, 26 in the U.S and its Caribbean islands. Twenty-three
died in other Leeward Islands. NHC estimated more than $9 billion in damages and economic losses
on the mainland, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The mainland alone accounted for $7 billion of
the total. |
Interesting.
| quote: | Hugo’s dangerous winds and storm surges had the potential of exacting a heavy death toll in the
Carolinas and the Caribbean, Some 216,000 people evacuated from the coasts before the storm struck.
The key to these evacuations, which undoubtedly saved hundreds of lives, was communications -- long
before Hugo, in the days immediately before the storm and during the event.
Cooperation and coordination among NWS, state, county and local officials developed over the years
provided the basis for the response to the hurricane. Working together, NWS and local officials
conducted broad-based weather awareness programs highlighting hurricane preparedness.
NOAA-produced print and electronic materials were used extensively. |
That source file is actually pretty interesting (with some pretty cool pics too). Worth a skim. |
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| MisterOpus1 |
Meanwhile, Bush fell off the wagon:
| quote: | Faced with the biggest crisis of his political life, President Bush has hit the bottle again, The National Enquirer can reveal.
Bush, who said he quit drinking the morning after his 40th birthday, has started boozing amid the Katrina catastrophe.
Family sources have told how the 59-year-old president was caught by First Lady Laura downing a shot of booze at their family ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he learned of the hurricane disaster.
His worried wife yelled at him: "Stop, George."....
A Washington source said: "The sad fact is that he has been sneaking drinks for weeks now. Laura may have only just caught him — but the word is his drinking has been going on for a while in the capital. He's been in a pressure cooker for months.
"The war in Iraq, the loss of American lives, has deeply affected him. He takes every soldier's life personally. It has left him emotionally drained.
The result is he's taking drinks here and there, likely in private, to cope. "And now with the worst domestic crisis in his administration over Katrina, you pray his drinking doesn't go out of control."
Another source said: "I'm only surprised to hear that he hadn't taken a shot sooner. Before Katrina, he was at his wit's end. I've known him for years. He's been a good ol' Texas boy forever. George had a drinking problem for years that most professionals would say needed therapy. He doesn't believe in it [therapy], he never got it. He drank his way through his youth, through college and well into his thirties. Everyone's drinking around him."
Another source said: "A family member told me they fear George is 'falling apart.' The First Lady has been assigned the job of gatekeeper."
http://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/63426 |
Well, at least the National Enquirer says so. They count, right? Guys? Right?
Hello? |
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