By the way, here's the evaculation map.
For now they've called for evacuating A,B, and C. That's the purple blue and green.
We're an orange down at the very southern tip of the peninsula.
Posted on 08/12/2004 6:55:26 PM PDT by mhking
The National Weather Service has just issued a Tornado Watch for most of south Florida until at least 8:00 Friday morning.
Hurricane City is streaming live coverage at http://hurricanecity.com/live.ram -- their coverage includes reports from The Weather Channel, from observers on the ground, plus streamed reports from local Miami television stations.
http://radio.nhcwx.com/streams.htm
More streaming tropical information here.
By the way, here's the evaculation map.
For now they've called for evacuating A,B, and C. That's the purple blue and green.
We're an orange down at the very southern tip of the peninsula.
Wow. It's got to be weird down there right now. How do you decide when it's safe to sleep?
"Then again, there's Bonnie Prince Charlie."
It's actually Burns, right?
http://www.sptimes.com/2002/webspecials02/andrew/1921video.shtml
(Click Link for Animation)
It's the worst-case scenario: a powerful storm on a northeast track heading straight for Tampa Bay.
What would happen?
That's the question emergency planners posed to the National Hurricane Center. The computer-generated image you're looking at is one answer.
It shows the potential flooding from a storm about the size of Hurricane Floyd, which ravaged the North Carolina coast in September 1999, killing 57 people. It was bigger, deadlier and almost as fierce as Hurricane Andrew, but not as costly.
It follows the same track as the unnamed hurricane that hit Tarpon Springs in 1921, the last time Tampa Bay took a direct hit from a hurricane.
Under this scenario, high winds create a storm surge causing massive flooding, particularly in Hillsborough County, where nearly the entire Interbay Peninsula would be underwater.
That may seem odd. Aren't the Pinellas beaches more vulnerable? The reason lies in the track of the storm, the counter-clockwise rotation of the winds, the shallowness of the Gulf of Mexico and the bay itself.
Hurricane experts call it the funnel effect.
The shallowness of the gulf makes Florida's west coast particularly vulnerable to hurricane-driven storm surge, said Brian Jarvinen, hurricane storm surge specialist with the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
In Atlantic storms, a lot of the energy produced by a hurricane is absorbed by the ocean. But in a gulf storm, the energy hits bottom, churning water toward the shoreline, Jarvinen said. That creates an even bigger problem if the storm is headed toward Tampa Bay.
"The added impact of the bay creates a funneling effect," Jarvinen said. The churning water surges into the bay, washing over the farthest point.
A computer model Jarvinen created shows flooding up to 17 feet above sea level in parts of Pinellas and Hillsborough.
"Certainly the impacts there are incredible, there's no doubt about it," said Jarvinen. "There's no doubt in our mind that someday we will see a storm like this and create that type of flooding. The question is when, but someday it will occur."
That's what they claim, LOL!
Hubby is watching this from NAS Pensacola...
I've got family in St Pete, Ocala, West Palm Beach, Miami, and Palm Coast...
This is gonna be an interesting weekend...
My sis lives in Tampa and folks just north in New Port Richey! Appreciate all your prayers!!
Prayers for all in Florida. I remember reading a book named "Condominium" years ago which featured a bad storm, and it was frightening to think about, even in fiction.
Many thanks for the map, Dawn, it has set my mind at rest.
I'm looking at that thing. Is orange 156 mph winds? That does not sound good. I must be interpreting that wrong.
Tonight might be last good night for the next several days! :-)
The local stations have switched to all-weather and they're giving us some rough estimates on when to expect to start to see the winds pick up. That's a big deal here since all public safety operations cease after a certain threshold (45mph?) and the bridges will be shut down too. Personally, I can't imagine going over the Skyway if there's 30mph winds, much less 45mph!!!
Och, aye.
That's the windspeed estimate to cause surge high enough to flood that specific color.
I saw that once before. Thanks for posting it. Luckily, I'm in the exrtreme NW corner of Hillsborough. Lots of lakes, so drainage from rain may be a problem, and wind, but no tidal flooding.
Scary though!
Wow! I saw footage on the ten o'clock news of thousands of cars crawling along the causeway out of the Keys. I hope there's enough time for everyone to get out safe.
This is going to be a bad one.
Prayers going up for all Floridian FReepers.
Has anyone heard whether Havana (and Gitmo) are still standing?
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