Posted on 09/13/2018 5:07:30 AM PDT by EyesOfTX
Todays Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends)
The award for the absolute dumbest and most dishonest Florence-related tweet of the day goes to Check out this little gem from the editorial board at the Houston Chronicle:
Chronicle Opinion @ChronOpinion Is Hurricane Florence our fault for emitting climate-changing greenhouse gases, or perhaps policy makers fault for allowing us to do so?http://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/Climate-change-hurricanes-and-the-hazards-of-13221381.php?t=636cc15df7
4:00 PM - Sep 12, 2018
Climate change, hurricanes and the hazards of connecting dots [Opinion] Is Hurricane Florence our fault for emitting climate-changing greenhouse gases, or perhaps policy makers fault for allowing us to do so?
houstonchronicle.com 3 See Chronicle Opinion's other Tweets Twitter Ads info and privacy
Or hey, maybe its an act of nature that is no more intense or potentially destructive than millions of similar weather events that have occurred throughout millions of eons before today. Given that the last 40 years of rising atmospheric CO2 have actually coincided with a period of record-low hurricane and tornadic activity in the Western hemisphere, the thought that any random hurricane event is somehow our fault is so utterly absurd that it borders on a true mental disorder.
No one would have ever dreamed that the ed board at the Houston Chronicle could outdo all the fake news hacks at CNN to win this particular prize, but lets just call it a real Cinderella story, because the entire piece is a fairy tale.
The problem with all these categories All that having been said, Florence is a nasty, nasty storm that is going to cause all sorts of major damage along the coasts of North and South Carolina and well inland. As I type this Im watching residents there telling news people they plan to ride this one out. Good god, people, what are you thinking about?
Well, one of the things they may be thinking about is the fact that as happens so often with these storms Florence has now been downgraded twice in the last 24 hours. It began Wednesday as a Category 4 storm, but was downgraded to a Cat 3 at mid-afternoon. Overnight, it was downgraded once again to a Cat 2 storm, with sustained winds of 110 miles per hour.
That is the problem with this whole category ranking system for these storms as the storms make their final approaches to land and typically weaken as they get into more shallow waters, the downgrading of them can lull residents into a false sense of security. People tend to forget that, when it made landfall, Hurricane Katrina was a Category 1 storm, having been downgraded three times in the 48 hours before it came ashore. Everyone who stayed in New Orleans to ride this one out regretted doing so.
My wife and I rode out Hurricane Ike at our home in Houston, 50 miles inland, in 2008. Ike was also a Cat 1 storm when it made landfall. That was a mean and nasty storm that took all afternoon and all night to pass through our city. We awoke the next morning to find downed trees and power lines throughout our neighborhood, and the 100 year-old home behind us completely totaled by a 60 foot-tall pecan tree the storm had uprooted and deposited in its living room.
That Cat 1 hurricane completely inundated Galveston Island, causing the worst flooding there since the Great Storm of 1900, which killed more than 8,000 residents. Ike also left hundreds of thousands of residents without power for days, tens of thousands for weeks and even months before the areas electricity was fully restored.
Last years Hurricane Harvey was just barely a hurricane at all when it made landfall, but the fact that it lingered along the Texas Gulf Coast dumping prodigious amounts of rain for several days ended up making it the most costly hurricane in American history in terms of the cost of damages due to all the flooding it caused. Given that the projected path for Florence is quite similar to that we saw from Harvey, anyone living near the coast who sticks around to ride this one out is literally placing their lives at risk.
At any rate, while the utility of this category system for hurricane trackers and scientists is easy to grasp, perhaps something different should be used to describe the storms when communicating with the public, given that so many of them end up being downgraded rapidly as they approach the coast. Because it really doesnt matter how fast their winds are blowing when theyre 500 miles out to sea. What matters is how theyre going to kill you when they get over land.
Just a thought.
Man, nobody couldve seen that one coming. Oh, wait Washingtons Evergreen State College, which has notoriously become the higher education poster child for obnoxious leftism, reported a catastrophic drop in new enrollments for its fall semester. Go figure.
Thats quite an a achievement in a U.S. senate that includes the likes of Cory Booker, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Bill Nelson, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Manchin. Becket Adams, writing in the Washington Examiner, reports that California Senator Kamala Harris is rapidly gaining a reputation as the most dishonest senator. Which of course means she will make the perfect Democrat nominee for the presidency in 2020.
Never, ever doubt that Trump Derangement Syndrome is real. So, lets say youre a longtime sociology professor at a minor college in Las Vegas. And lets say that you, like pretty much every other sociology professor in America, hate President Donald Trump, because of course you do. And lets say you want to find some way to express your hatred of President Trump what do you do?
Why, if you are Sociology Professor Mark J. Bird, you shoot your own self in your own freakin arm! I swear I do not make this stuff up. Who could?
Just another day in fake hurricane news and Trump Derangement Syndrome America.
That is all.
Follow me on Twitter at @GDBlackmon
As if hurricanes never existed prior to industrialization. Remind me again, how many SUV’s were being driven in Galveston in 1900?
Thank you! The local buffoons are already salivating at the possibility of Issac becoming a threat! I just wish they would monitor cold fronts in Alaska and predict when snowstorms will hit! We need winter- it’s in the mid 90’s for the rest of the month!
Or who was President when Harvey hit, and Issac( the storm they couldn’t ‘find’-that was over me for 3 days)! 8 days without power-UNTIL Obama came to town! Then, VOILA!
They always hype these dam things
Wishful hopeful anticipation?
They hope many will die.
Then the weather people, with their white capped teeth and other body enhancements, can dramatically move around and point at maps.
While the other alphabet channels blame Trump for being a heartless goon who does nothing while people are dying and starving!
The one doing the weather on BBC couldn’t just say Flooding she had to say Catastrophic Flooding D’oh
While that is true when it first made landfall in Florida, however, once it was in the Gulf it quickly intensified back to a Cat. 5 before retreating back to a category 3 prior to landfall in La. & then again in Miss.
Katrina weakened to a Category 3 before making landfall along the northern Gulf Coast, first in southeast Louisiana (sustained winds: 125mph) and then made landfall once more along the Mississippi Gulf Coast (sustained winds: 120mph). Katrina finally weakened below hurricane intensity late on August 29th over east central Mississippi.
But remember hurricane Andrew did make landfall as a Cat 5. One of only 3 to ever hit the U.S. since 1900.
https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h2125.html
Quote:
Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale
The United States uses the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale developed in 1969. Categories are used to predict how much damage to structures is to be expected, how much flooding, and what the storm surge will be. Neither rainfall nor location is taken into account. These categories are:
Category One
Sustained winds: 7495 mph
Storm surge: 45 ft
Central pressure: 28.94 inHg; 980 mbars
Potential damage: No significant damage to building structures. Damage primarily to unanchored mobile homes, shrubbery, and trees. Also, some coastal flooding and minor pier damage.
Example storms: Hurricane Agnes (1972); Hurricane Danny (1997).
Category Two
Sustained winds: 96110 mph
Storm surge: 68 ft
Central Pressure: 28.5028.91 inHg; 965979 mbars
Potential damage: Some roofing material, door, and window damage. Considerable damage to vegetation, mobile homes, etc. Flooding damages piers and small craft in unprotected moorings may break their moorings.
Example storms: Hurricane Bob (1991); Hurricane Bonnie (1998).
Category Three
Sustained winds: 111130 mph
Storm surge: 912 ft
Central pressure: 27.9128.47 inHg; 945964 mbars
Potential damage: Some structural damage to small residences and utility buildings, with a minor amount of curtainwall failures. Mobile homes are destroyed. Flooding near the coast destroys smaller structures with larger structures damaged by floating debris. Terrain may be flooded well inland.
Example storms: Great New England Hurricane of 1938; Hurricane Fran (1996); Hurricane Rita (2005).
Category Four
Sustained winds: 131155 mph
Storm surge: 1318 ft
Central pressure: 27.1727.88 inHg; 920944 mbars
Potential damage: More extensive curtainwall failures with some complete roof structure failure on small residences. Major erosion of beach areas. Terrain may be flooded well inland.
Example storms: The Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900; Hurricane Charley (2004); Hurricane Hugo (1989).
Category Five
Sustained winds: 156+ mph
Storm surge: 19+ ft
Central pressure: less than 27.17 inHg; less than 920 mbars
Potential damage: Complete roof failure on many residences and industrial buildings. Some complete structural failures with small utility buildings blown over or away. Flooding causes major damage to lower floors of all structures near the shoreline. Massive evacuation of residential areas may be required.
Example storms: Hurricane Camille (1969); Labor Day Hurricane of 1935.
Now if you look up the system, they JUST talk about wind speed.
Which is a load of crock, because storm surge does by far the most local damage to the spot hit.
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshws.php
So what category would you rate Hurricane Katrina as based just on its storm surge?
Hint, Hint...
Katrina’s Storm Surge
A Weather Underground 16 part series about Hurricane Katrina, by Margie Kieper.
Hurricane Katrina of 2005 produced the highest storm surge ever recorded on the U.S. coast—an astonishing 27.8 feet at Pass Christian, Mississippi.
This bested the previous U.S. record of 22.8 feet, which also occurred at Pass Christian, during 1969’s Hurricane Camille. According to the NHC Katrina final report (PDF File), Hurricane Katrina brought a surge of 24 - 28 feet to a 20-mile stretch of Mississippi coast. Fully 90 miles of coast from eastern Louisiana to Alabama received a storm surge characteristic of a Category 3 hurricane. The colossal damage that resulted has been documented by blogger Margie Kieper during a series of blog posts that ran in the summer of 2006. The contents are reproduced here, and consist of an introduction explaining why the surge was so large, and 16 parts exploring the damage done to each stretch of the Gulf Coast ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
https://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/Katrinas_surge_contents.asp
And what Category would you rate Katrina at if you based it on Pressure?
Hint, Hint...
Its minimum pressure at its second landfall was 920 mbar (27 inHg), making Katrina the third-strongest hurricane on record to make landfall on the United States, behind Hurricane Camille’s 900-millibar (27 inHg) reading in 1969, and the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane’s 892-millibar (26.3 inHg) record.
Katrina made its second landfall at 6:10 a.m. CDT on August 29 as a Category 3 hurricane with sustained winds of 125 miles per hour (201 km/h) near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana. Because Katrina had just weakened from Category 4 and due to the shape of the coastline, sustained Category 4 winds likely existed on land while the eye was over water. At landfall, hurricane-force winds extended 120 miles (190 kilometres) from the center, the storm’s pressure was 920 millibars (27 inches of mercury), and its forward speed was 15 mph (24 km/h). As it made its way up the eastern Louisiana coastline, most communities in Plaquemines, St. Bernard Parish, and Slidell in St. Tammany Parish were severely damaged by storm surge and the strong winds of the eyewall, which also grazed eastern New Orleans, causing in excess of $1 billion worth of damage to the city (see Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans).
Thanks much! I missed the differentiation between the SaffirSimpson hurricane wind scale (SSHWS), formerly the SaffirSimpson hurricane scale (SSHS).
I found an explanation of why they moved away from the SSHS here:
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/sshws.pdf
One of the newer measures of how bad a storm is is Integrated Kinetic Energy. (IKE).
I havent fully bought into this measure, because it is difficult to calculate and thus easy to fudge the numbers for political reasons.
Here is a master fudger in action:
Sandy packed more energy than Katrina at landfall
By Brian McNoldy
Extra-tropical Sandy was the leftists cause celbre of the day. So they wanted to make it worse than Katrina.
In reality, extra-tropical Sandy was not even close to Hurricane Katrina.
There is a metric that quantifies the energy of a storm based on how far out tropical-storm force winds extend from the center, known as Integrated Kinetic Energy or IKE*. In modern records, Sandys IKE ranks second among all hurricanes at landfall, higher than devastating storms like Hurricane Katrina, Andrew and Hugo, and second only to Hurricane Isabel in 2003.
If you take out the two pretenders, Isabel and Sandy, Hurricane Katrina was number one in IKE.
A bit of fudging on the extent of the winds in this method goes a long way to boosting the IKE of a hurricane or a extra-tropical storm.
Hurricane Katrina was only a Category 3 storm at landfall, yet ended up being the most costly natural disaster in our nations history due its impact on a vulnerable, highly populated low lying city. Sandy had Category 1 winds at landfall yet was able to create very significant storm surge over hundreds of miles of highly populated coastline. Katrinas IKE was more concentrated, Sandys IKE was more spread out. This metric - more than wind speed - encapsulates the respective storms horrific effects. Sandy may end up as the second most costly storm in U.S. history. Given its top ranking IKE and the area it impacted, that should come as no surprise.
Yep, at the time I was a consultant working at the City of N. O. Katrina hit about 3 weeks after I started my contract. End up working on that contract for 11 years. Just recently went back there on a new contract.
Makes you wonder what these folks think caused hurricanes 5000 years ago.
Driving thru Nawlins after the storm...
to clarify 3-4 months after the storm.
Through a city with no electricity, no occupied houses, no other cars on the street, no places to stop for gas, food, etc.
That was truly amazing.
I was part of the effort to restore Ben Franklin high school - the number one public high school in the State of Louisiana, and the only 5 star public high school by a wide mark.
A was an officer in the schools PTA - the membership person.
When we the school board voted to turn the school into a type 3 charter - meeting was at city hall - 1/2 the audience was our students - and they all stood to support our being restarted.
Sigh. That was an amazing day.
About 800 kids in the school, about 200 per grade. Typically 35-40 of them were National SemiFinalists every year. EVERY year.
Simply an amazing school.
It was almost a month before they let me back into the City.
About the same here.
We almost went 3weeks after - but Hurricane Rita delayed that visit.
It was either 1-2 weeks after that for the first visit.
It helped that our effort was led by the football coach - who was a former marine.
And yet, we are expected to place all our confidence in the Weather Channel which only two days ago was calling Florence the Storm of the Century or the Storm of A Lifetime. In the end it proved to be just a storm with a lot of wind and rain. Notice the number of times the rare photo ops of storm damage are repeatedly shown. There is an amazing number of people crying wolf with this storm and who have been crying wolf for seemingly days on end to boost ratings and advertizing revenues. This may turn out to be the most damaging effect of this storm, not weather related but people related.
Florence. The short form of that is Flo. Flo is the spokesperson for Progressive Insurance. Therefore, progressives are complicit in the hurricane.
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