hurricanes
cmooney | September 2, 2007
Here's the now-Category 2 storm, forecast to follow a similar track to that of Hurricane Dean last month--almost straight across the Caribbean towards the Yucatan, Belize, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
The official forecast says Felix will reach Category 4 strength along the way. Any track change could of course implicate the United States. More soon....
sheril | August 30, 2007In January of 2003, I sat in Joe Kelley's seminar at the University of Maine as he foretold the devastation that was to come to New Orleans. I'd never heard this chilling story before and listened intently as he explained that as far back as when The Big Easy flooded in the 1920's, scientists realized that the Mississippi Delta would continue to change its course (rivers have a habit of doing that you see). I began to understand that over time, the already vulnerable city faced increasing threat and felt dizzy amid the whirlwind of so many alarming facts and figures.
The levees are…
sheril | August 28, 2007Just as we've begun to contemplate the implications of our changing physical environment - rising sea level, warmer temperatures, potentially stronger storms, ocean acidification, and so on... yet another cause for concern. Higher insurance rates are upon us!
In my own state of North Carolina, rates have increased by 25 percent since May. The reason? Fear we'll be hit by a storm as strong as Hurricane Dean or as destructive as Katrina.
Officials with the N.C. Rate Bureau, which prepares rate requests for insurance companies, don't specifically blame global warming for more hurricanes. But…
sheril | August 23, 2007Chris just mentioned Hurricane Dean's cold wake, and I'm reminded that there may be some potentially helpful implications for the fisheries of the region. I recently explained the concept of "dead zones": oxygen-free ocean regions characterized by a dense layer of warm water settled on top of colder water. This stratification, called a thermocline, keeps oxygen from filtering through the water column--resulting in massive areas of oceans devoid of marine life. The Gulf of Mexico has been experiencing an enormous dead zone every year, exacerbated by runoff from fertilizers and animal waste…
cmooney | August 23, 2007It's always amazing to watch what a Category 4 or 5 hurricane does to the ocean it passes over. So lets go over to Remote Sensing Systems and look at the Caribbean before and after Dean passed.
Here are the SST anomalies before Dean went through, on August 17th. Red means warm anomaly, blue means cold anomaly.
And here are the SST anomalies now that Dean has passed:
Check out the Remote Sensing Systems page for Hurricane Dean for higher resolution and more ability to monkey around with the data. Pretty cool, eh?
(Pun intended.)
cmooney | August 20, 2007Dean made landfall a few hours ago while still intensifying, and set some scary records. As the National Hurricane Center details:
A DROPSONDE IN THE EYE MEASURED A CENTRAL PRESSURE OF 906 MB JUST PRIOR TO LANDFALL. SOME HISTORIC NOTES ARE IN ORDER HERE. THE 906 MB CENTRAL PRESSURE IS THE NINTH LOWEST ON RECORD FOR AN ATLANTIC BASIN HURRICANE...AND THE THIRD LOWEST AT LANDFALL BEHIND THE 1935 LABOR DAY HURRICANE IN THE FLORIDA KEYS AND HURRICANE GILBERT OF 1988 IN CANCUN MEXICO. DEAN IS ALSO THE FIRST CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE TO MAKE LANDFALL IN THE ATLANTIC BASIN SINCE ANDREW OF 1992.…
cmooney | August 20, 2007The National Hurricane Center has put Dean's official intensity at 140 knots, or 160 miles per hour--or Category 5. But the storm is intensifying just before landfall--a truly evil thing for it to do--and might be even stronger. Here's the latest, revealing forecast discussion:
DEAN HAS TAPPED INTO ENERGY PROVIDED BY THE DEEP WARM WATERS OF THE NORTHWESTERN CARIBBEAN SEA THIS EVENING...AND HAS REACHED CATEGORY FIVE STATUS WITH AN INTENSITY OF 140 KT. DURING THE LAST PENETRATION BY THE AIR FORCE RESERVE UNIT RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT AT 00Z...A CENTRAL PRESSURE OF 914 MB WAS MEASURED. THE PEAK…
cmooney | August 20, 2007Here's the latest infrared. The National Hurricane Center confirms it--Dean is a Category 5 hurricane, 160 mile per hour sustained winds, 915 millibars central pressure and presumably still dropping.
Dean is as strong as any storm on earth this year and still seems to be getting stronger. All we can do is hope people are far from the shorelines tonight and, indeed, far from the landfall point. This isn't the kind of storm you want to try to ride out.
cmooney | August 20, 2007Here's the latest image of Dean, looking more menacing than ever:
Yet despite this staggering satellite appearance, the NHC has not yet pronounced the storm a Category 5. However, the last aircraft report put the sea level pressure at 918 millibars--pretty darn low, and the lowest measured for Dean so far.
For comparison, 1995's Hurricane Opal had a minimum sea level pressure of 916 millibars--and this made Opal the strongest Atlantic hurricane not to be officially listed as a Cat 5.
So I'm still expecting this storm to be named a Category 5 soon enough, presumably at 11 ET. Then again, I…
cmooney | August 20, 2007Here's a truly sublime image:
And here's a just plain scary one:
My latest "Storm Pundit" discussion of Dean is here. We're looking at a probable Category 5 landfall in the Yucatan but the U.S. is probably going to be spared.
cmooney | August 18, 2007...just kidding, Dean is now a strong Category 4....but I think the other title would also be appropriate. My latest "Storm Pundit" post on Dean, drawing parallels between its track and that of 1988's devastating Hurricane Gilbert, is now up at The Daily Green.
And here's the latest picture of Dean, which could become a Cat 5 at any time and which is headed straight for Jamaica...
cmooney | August 16, 2007Here's a picture of the strong Category 1 storm, soon to be even stronger in all likelihood, and approaching the Lesser Antilles:
UPDATE: Dean is now a Category 2 storm. Jeff Matthews has a long post on potential damage in the Caribbean. He compares Dean, in its projected track and intensity, to two of our worst Atlantic hurricanes, Ivan of 2004 and Gilbert of 1988.
cmooney | August 16, 2007The tropics sure are giving me a lot to write about. My latest "Storm Pundit" post, entitled "Nothing But Land to Stop Hurricane Dean...and Supertyphoon Sepat," is now up. Both of these storms are scary, and Dean, now officially a Category 1 hurricane, is predicted to be as strong as Category 4 by the end of the forecast period.
Here's the latest track, which is basically unchanged except that the Lesser Antilles are now under a hurricane warning:
As I put it in the latest Storm Pundit post: "Already, I think it's fair to say that this storm is going to provide us with much more drama than…
cmooney | August 15, 2007The latest National Hurricane Center forecast discussion, from forecaster Eric Blake, is blunt:
BASED ON WHAT WE THINK WE KNOW ABOUT INTENSITY CHANGE...THERE DO NOT SEEM TO BE TOO MANY INHIBITING FACTORS TO A FUTURE INTENSIFICATION OF DEAN. GLOBAL MODELS UNANIMOUSLY DEVELOP A LARGE UPPER-LEVEL ANTICYCLONE NEAR THE CENTER OF THE HURRICANE AS THE SYSTEM TRAVELS INTO THE CARIBBEAN SEA. IN COMBINATION WITH VERY DEEP WARM WATERS...THIS PATTERN WOULD FAVOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF A POWERFUL HURRICANE.
Here is the latest track for Dean, which is supposed to be a hurricane within 24 hours:
cmooney | August 15, 2007MIT hurricane theorist Kerry Emanuel pioneered a mode of analysis known as hurricane maximum potential intensity theory (MPI theory)--essentially, an equation that can calculate the maximum surface wind speed, and the minimum sea level pressure, achievable by a given hurricane in a given climate. I don't understand in intimate detail all the terms in the equation (which you can read here), but I understand in essence what it does. You might say that it calculates a kind of hurricane speed limit.
Obviously, the maximum potential intensity varies by time of year and by area of the globe; but…
cmooney | August 14, 2007
The worst case scenarios for the now weakening Hurricane Flossie seem unlikely to be realized--this storm will affect Hawaii, but will not strike it head on.
In the Atlantic, though, our "D" storm--Dean--was just named by the National Hurricane Center. Indeed, you can see Dean starting to wrap convection around its low level circulation center in the image above. My latest "Storm Pundit" post, readable here, discusses possible scenarios for Dean's future...some of which don't look so good. Short version: This storm could end up in the Caribbean and very intense.
Click here for more…
cmooney | August 13, 2007The latest discussion from Central Pacific Hurricane Center forecaster Sam Houston (yes, that's really his name) says it all:
HURRICANE FLOSSIE IS NOT WILLING TO GIVE UP. DESPITE HINTS THAT THE HURRICANE MIGHT MOVE OVER COOLER OCEAN WATER TEMPERATURES...AND THAT IT WOULD EVENTUALLY ENCOUNTER HOSTILE VERTICAL WIND SHEAR...IT CONTINUES TO MAINTAIN ITS INTENSITY. THE LATEST SATELLITE INTENSITY ESTIMATES FROM JTWC AND SAB WERE 6.0...WHILE HFO REPORTED 5.5. THE ADT AT 1200 UTC IS 6.2...WHICH SUGGESTS A MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WIND SPEED OF 120 KT.
That's right: Flossie has strengthened since the last…
cmooney | August 13, 2007
Hurricane Flossie continues to approach the Hawaiian islands, although it remains quite hard to predict precisely where the storm will go or how strong it will be when it gets there. But we know this: Flossie has already made quite a habit of defying forecasts and expectations. This storm has now remained at Category 4 intensity for more than 48 hours, despite steady predictions of weakening (and no advance prediction that Flossie would become so strong to begin with).
My latest "Storm Pundit" column, discussing Flossie in greater detail, can now be read here.
Meanwhile, there are lots of…
cmooney | August 11, 2007Overnight and up through this morning, Hurricane Flossie in the Northeast Pacific--having started out as a category 1 storm--rapidly intensified into a weak Category 4 with a well defined eye, as you can see in the infrared image below:
I think it's fair to say Flossie's behavior took everyone by surprise. The National Hurricane Center forecasters were not predicting it, or anything close. Neither were the models. This is yet another indication of how bad we still are at forecasting hurricane intensity.
But you can't blame the forecasters, really. I'm looking at some of the same data they…
cmooney | August 10, 2007My latest "Storm Pundit" post is up over at The Daily Green. It's entitled "Forecasts, Fulminations, and Flossie," and it gives the rundown on the latest prognostications of Atlantic hurricane activity, as well as discussing the strong (and weirdly named) tropical storm now possibly headed towards Hawaii.
Meanwhile, the website ClimateandInsurance.org, created by the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, just interviewed me about Storm World. I say stuff like this:
I wanted to tell a story that provided a chance to explore some of the knottiest questions at the interface between…