Climate and Weather

As a supplement to my essay on Maine here is the actual important information on Kyle. Kyle is only barely being thought of as a hurricane at this moment. The forcasters are using terms like "Ugly" (which means not well formed as a hurricane) and "Convectivly Challenged" in their discussion. Kyle will come ashore in Maine, somewhere around Eastport, over night (near morning) but it is very unlikely to be a hurricane by that time, having passed over cooler waters and generally being a train wreck of a cyclone. The fact that this was a tropical storm heading straight north, then turned…
To go "down east" is to go "to Maine" ... or if you are already in Maine, to go to the "real" Maine. As you drive down east on Route One, you can see the transition as clear as the gull shit on Schooner Head. This is to say, it is subtle and misleading. Geology, culture, the weather, and the sea make the Maine coast what it is, and all four of these factors start to blink in and out as you leave Boston and head down east (up north). Sandy beaches give way to rocky heads, you hear pockets of Acadian and Maine accent as long as you get your coffee and donuts or your clam rolls somewhere…
"Flee Ike or Face Certain Death" This is what is being told to residents of Galveston Texas and surrounding areas. I don't know if that is strictly true or not, but it is close enough that you should listen. Or put it this way: If you stay, and you are wrong, those last few minutes as you are being swept out to sea in the crumbling, tumbling remains of your house, unable to distinguish between sea and sky, choking on the salt water and being battered by debris, will be very, very embarrassing. Seriously. Go. Now. Having said that, I want to make a few notes on what is true and not true…
I have a much larger post coming out about Ike and hurricanes in general, but for now here is a quick update: Ike is going to come ashore between Seven PM tongight and Seven AM tomorrow morning. Since it is a very large storm, the most severe winds will be affecting a very large area. You can already see bands of rain off Galveston in this radar image from ten minutes ago (as I write this):click for most current radar The estimate for the storm surge is such that if Ike comes ashore at just the right place and at just the right time and intensifies just enough, Galveston Texas will be…
Life Science Teachers: Take special note! This is not yet an error in the mainstream press, but there is an error afoot, currently represented in the widely read slashdot, which I imagine will propagate. The purpose of this post is to alert you to this problem and prepare you for the occasion when you run into a wackaloon creationist waving their arms around and screaming "Carbon dating does not work! It's been proven." This story also has a Global Warming Denialism component. What I'm going to do here is give you the basic facts, then the misinterpreted text. We start with the basic…
The very outermost bands of Ike, which is a very large hurricane, are stroking the Texas coast this morning. These outer rain band are actually affecting Loiuisana as well. The center of Ike's projected path is Galveston/Houston Texas, and landfall of the eye of the storm is currently projected at 1:00 AM local time Saturday morning. Ike is currently a Category Two storm and will strength during the day today (Friday) to a Category Three storm, and so will come ashore as a major hurricane. This exact track can change but the forecasters are saying that the models are all agreeing, so…
Some time Friday night or even late after noon on Friday, you can expect hurricane force winds from Hurricane Ike to affect the Texas coast, possibly not too far from Galveston/Houston. Note, however, that the Hurricane is still pretty far out at sea and it is just now beginning a slow right turn that is expected to get more curvy over the next 48 hours. So, the exact location of land fall of the eye is very difficult to predict. Note also that Ike is very large, and has unusually strong winds in places somewhat far from the eye. The strength of the hurricane at landfall will be Category…
Hurricane Ike appears to be done with Cuba, and remains as a Category One storm. The three day cone is now ashore in Texas, so the predicted location of landfall can be made with increasing certainty with each passing 12 hour period. Conditions for hurricane strengthening are about as good as they get in the Gulf, with nothing important expected to shear at the top, and two or three eddies of warm water to pass over. The hurricane is currently heading straight west by north west, but will make a right (northerly)turn as it approaches land and will come ashore somewhere along the Texas…
Hurricane Ike is currently over warm water south of Cuba, and is heading back onto land. Ike will pass over roughly the same area of Western Cuba that was hit by hurricane Gustav. Once back on land, Ike will weaken again, and then by tomorrow morning Ike will be positioned well over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Even though Ike will be following part way in the path of Gustav, the earlier hurricane's cooling effects on the sea surface temperatures (SST) are now minimal. Conditions in the Gulf for causing the hurricane to strengthen are excellent. As Ike makes its way the long way…
Remember how Hanna messed up western Cuba? It now looks like Ike is going to mess up the rest of Cuba. The current track forecast has Ike running right down the spine of the country until exiting just east of Hanna's coverage. Ike's center will move onto Cuba in several hours, and back over water, into the Gulf, early AM Tuesday. Ike is currently a Category Four hurricane. It will be considerably weakened after it leaves the Cuban mainland Tuesday, but conditions for its restrengthening are in place. Also, while Ike is forecast to remain right over the Cuban mainland for a couple of…
One of the most important elements in the success of the D-Day invasion of Europe ... commanded by the other Ike, General Ike Eisenhower, was that the Allies pretended to prepare to invade from and to a different region of England/France. Like its namesake, Hurricane Ike seems to be trying to fake us out. Of course, it is a hurricane and thus does not have the ability to actually try to fake us out. Right now, if the five day forecast is taken verbatim and extended a few more days, Ike is going to strike New Orleans as a Category 3 or 4 hurricane. But the certainty of this prediction is…
It is raining cats and dogs in Florida, thanks to Tropical Storm Hanna. Ike remains a real threat. Josephine is a giant question mark. Details below the fold. Hanna is a really large tropical storm that is eventually ... by tomorrow AM ... be more or less over land, where it will quickly move north/northeast not straying very far from the coast. It will probably jump over the coast at least once (its current track has its center going over Cape Cod) but that hardly maters as it is so large. When it passes cape cod, if it is still strong enough (which it likely will be) the folks in…
Ike is now a Category Four Hurricane, and quite a nice looking one at that. Hurricanes are giant engines made of air that are driven by the transfer of heat from the sea surface to the top of the troposphere. The greater the difference in SST (sea surface temperature) and higher altitude temperature, the more power in the engine. But, there are some very strong wind currents in the atmosphere above the troposphere, and that matters as well. When you fly in a commercial air liner over a long distance, sometimes (depending on the airline) they display a chart that shows current location, speed…
Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming I've been putting off posting my review of this book until just the right moment. Perhaps that moment is now, with the juxtaposition of a serious storm ... hurricane Gustav ... arriving in the vicinity of New Orleans and the opening day of the Republican National Convention, since both charismatic hurricanes and not so charismatic politicians play such a large role in the book at hand.Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming, by Chris Mooney, is a well written, informative, captivating, and…
This is a rough sketch of the actual path of the eye of hurricane Katrina compared to the current projected path of the eye of hurricane Gustav. Now, this is NOT Gustav's actual path. We don't know what the path is going to be. But this graphic allows for a few key points to be made. First, realize that in the counter-clockwise spinning hurricane, the right hand side, and in particular, the 'front right" quadrant, of the storm is where the winds are strongest ... because we need to add together both the forward motion of the storm, maybe between 10 and 15 mph at landfall in this case, with…
There has been enough change in the predictions regarding Gustav to make it worth a fresh look. Bottom line: It is weaker than previously predicted, it is still almost exactly on the same track, and it may be speeding up a little bit. Tropical Storm and soon after hurricane force winds may strike the Northern Gulf Coast by 2:00 or so Monday Morning (or even sooner), certainly during the night tonight. The eye may cross the coast about mid day Monday (tomorrow). The center of the predicted path is just far enough west of New Orleans proper to worry a lot about the storm surge. Details: 1…
Gustav's eye has passed over western Cuba, and remained a category four hurricane the entire time. One gust in Cuba, where Gustav mainly affected the tobacco growing region, as clocked at 204 miles per hour. Miles. Not kilometers. The storm has caused considerable damage there (source). Here is the salient information regarding the current forecast: 1) Confidence about Gustav's path has increased and the following may, while it should be read with the usual caveats as to error, is thought to be more accurate than typical. 2) The intensity estimate has much less certainty. There are wind…
.... Or so goes the last sentence in the current National Hurricane Center forecast discussion.This is Gusav. Even though it is only a strong tropical storm, it looks a lot like a hurricane already. This could be a Category IV hurricane in two or three days (Gustav, Atlantic Floater 1 Visible, Friday AM). Right now, the level of complexity of Gustav's immediate future is higher than average for a hurricane. This is mainly because the two or three major atmospheric features that will determine Gustav's direction and rate of movement over then ext two days are themselves less predictable…
Did Past Climate Changes Promote Speciation in the Amazon? Any time you've got a whopping big river like the Amazon (or a mountain chain like the Andes, or an ocean, or whatever), you've gotta figure that it will be a biogeographical barrier. Depending on the kind of organisms, big rivers, high mountains, oceans, forests, deserts, and so on can provide a habitat or a barrier, and when there is a barrier, populations may end up splitting across that barrier and diverging to become novel species. The role of the big tropical rivers such as the Amazon and the Congo, and the role of rain…
NASA's JPL has a new web site which focuses on surface conditions on one specific planet: The Earth. It has a Sea Level Viewer which is basically a very fancy menu for a number of multi-media presentations, and a list of current or proposed missions. I am not overly impressed with this, but it may be a good resource for the kiddies. Much more interesting, and in fact, quite impressive, is the "Climate Time Machine" ... This shows ice melting, sea level change, CO2 emissions, and average global temperature. The CO2 emissions is fascinating, because CO2 emissions are an assay of…