Posted on 06/29/2010 6:28:20 AM PDT by bestintxas
The tropical storm plowing across the Gulf of Mexico could send oil skimmers back to port and make containment booms useless, even from far away. But the rough weather also might give nature a hand in breaking down crude from the massive oil spill.
Waves churned up by Tropical Storm Alex could help break up the patches of oil scattered across the sea, and the higher-than-normal winds that radiate far from the storm could help the crude evaporate faster. Forecasters said Monday they didn't expect the center of Alex to pass near the site of BP's busted well.
"The oil isn't in one solid sheet. It's all broken up into patches anyway. It will actually work to break those patches down," said Piers Chapman, chairman of the oceanography department at Texas A&M University.
Alex could send high winds and rough seas -- perhaps as high as 12 feet -- rippling across the Gulf. Skimming vessels operating far from the storm's center may be idled because they can't operate in such swells. Floating oil-containment booms could be rendered useless by waves slopping over them and may have to be pulled out of the water.
Pulling boats and crews off the water could cost precious time, said Nancy Kinner, co-director of the Coastal Response Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. Equipment has to be stripped down, packed and protected from the force of the storm, and then has to be reassembled and deployed again, she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Mother Nature to the rescue.
What’s to say the Obamessiah didn’t cause the winds to rise and cleanse the capitalists’ mistake?
( /extreme sarc)
...they’ve got to stop the leak!...even Clinton now says blow it up...as much as I didn’t like him, he was a lot better than the effete community organizer we have now.
Word around Gulf Shores AL is a storm surge will push the oil onshore (Ivan’s surge came under my mother’s house). Folks are talking about a ‘superfund’ site.
A hurricane won’t clean anything up. It will just push more oil up onto the beach and into the wetlands.
It will be a colossal mess.
Ok, but won't that oil get dumped somewhere else, like on land?
Just askin.
If the EPA gets 'wind' of this they'll issue a cease-and-dissist order against Alex.
don’t believe it.
the wave action and battering winds and rains will disperse the oil and you will never see it again.
i work for an oil company and have seen oil-contaiminated sites cleaned pristine following hurricanes.
this is like seeing a drop of oil in a large swimming pool, then stirring the water up like a large kitchen mixer. the ppm of oil left will be so small it is registered by a number of decimal places.
Yeah, Bill Clinton has impeccable credentials in physics and geology. What, like a PhD or something, right?
“A hurricane won’t clean anything up. It will just push more oil up onto the beach and into the wetlands.
It will be a colossal mess”
You must be reading the NOAA website, you know the ones that falsified all the climate data for political purposes.
They are REALLY somebody to believe.
If you picture counterclockwise winds flowing into the partial vacuum of the hurricane eye, they will be from the northeast...drawing everything away from land.
I'm basing this on 34 years experience as a hurricane specialist for a n NBC affiliate in Florida. My first really big hurricane was Camille in 1969.
Thanks for your insight :)
Although the National Hurricane Center is a part of the huge NOAA complex, it runs sans politics. NOAA pretty much lets them do their specialty without interference. NOAA knows not to mess with NHC.
“Since the source of the oil is not finite, as in a ship leaking, but still gushing - how do you think a major hurricane would play out today?
Thanks for your insight :) ‘
With his experience, Capt Norm sounds the best for a dialogue here.
My two bits are
1. the oil is in fact finite in two ways
a. it will eventually be stopped mechanically by the relief well.
b. Like every other oil reservoir in the world known to man, the reservoir it has tapped is only of a certain size and will exhaust its ability to produce over time
I agree with your inference that the well needs to stop flowing in order to get the hurricane to best clean things up.
My comment was a general comment on what high winds and high tides would do. All a hurricane would do is move the oil around, it won’t clean anything up.
Of course the track could move oil from off shore Louisiana to Mexico or Texas. This track would not ‘clean’ up the beaches already contaminated with oil.
If the storm takes a northerly track then it will push more oil up onto the beaches. Again, it won’t clean anything up.
Of course I’m not a weatherman. I do know that if you spill oil on the garage floor it doesn’t help to move it around. You actually have to get down and clean it up.
‘i work for an oil company and have seen oil-contaiminated sites cleaned pristine following hurricanes.”
Did you see the other areas that were previously oil free which were now contaminated?
“the ppm of oil left will be so small it is registered by a number of decimal places.”
So the hurricane will reduce the amount of oil that has been spilled?
“Of course I’m not a weatherman. I do know that if you spill oil on the garage floor it doesn’t help to move it around. You actually have to get down and clean it up.”
What do you think would happen to say a quart of oil spilt on the floor that say you take a high-pressure sprayer and drill it with say 10,000 gallons of water over the course of several days?
Think you could ever find it again on the floor(or anywhere?)
It will move the oil around and blend it into an emulsion which will help dissipate it.
Although there's a lot of oil, when it's thinned out by blending it into 600 quadrillion gallons of Gulf sea water, you'd be hard pressed to find it.
Those high winds and seas literally scour coastal areas and even blend a lot of fine sand into the sea water making it look milky for several days after passage.
Fishermen used to take advantage of this as sight-feeder fish can't feed normally while the water is cloudy and thus get very hungry when it clears. That's when you get record-setting catches for a few days.
Is there any data as to the extent to which a tropical storm will oxygenate the surface water of the Gulf?
‘It will move the oil around and blend it into an emulsion which will help dissipate it.”
Perhaps it will do that in some places. In others it will simply push the oil up into the wetlands and into peoples homes.
“Although there’s a lot of oil, when it’s thinned out by blending it into 600 quadrillion gallons of Gulf sea water”
Except you’re not blending it or thinning it with 600 quadrillion gallons of sea water.
“Those high winds and seas literally scour coastal areas and even blend a lot of fine sand into the sea water making it look milky for several days after passage.”
Having lived through hurricanes and not just watched them on TV I am quite familiar with what they do.
They aren’t a majic dustbuster or margarita blender.
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