New Hurricane Thread

That's a little farther south than these things normally go. Usually they bash the hell out of the British Isles.

 

So, essentially, we are all saying storm activity, ocean rise, sea temps, etc. over the last several years are perfectly normal. Check. I will be sure to pass that along to future generations.

 

What is normal, exactly? In a historical sense?
We've only been cataloguing these things in minute detail for about 70 years, and anecdotally for maybe 120 years. Maybe a little longer along parts of the East Coast. Even within that time the frequency and intensity of storms has ebbed and flowed, and where exactly they'll hit is still a crapshoot. A storm like Michael hasn't hit that part of the Florida panhandle in a long time but they have hit damn near every other part of the Gulf Coast, so maybe the statistical anomaly is that they'd gone that long without a strike.
Hurricanes have happened for a long time and a lot of aspects of them are still random, still dictated by the atmospheric forces at play in a given week. Different wind patterns could have turned this thing into nothing more than a rainy day on the Gulf Coast, rather than a monster hurricane.

 

You could have had 17 Cat 5 storms slam into North America in 1376, and nobody would know.

In 2005, the year Wilma passed over my house, they ran through all the alphabetical names and had to go to Greek letters to name their storms.

This year, Hurricane season is almost over, and we're only up to "N." Guess hurricane frequency is decreasing, eh?

 

Had a side thought while watching this thing unfold. A hundred years ago, the loss of life from this storm in a similarly populated area would have been catastrophic. The way it blew up from what was supposed to be a fast-moving Category 1 to a fast-moving monster Category 5 would have caught people totally unaware. It would have been similar to the 1900 Galveston hurricane that killed thousands. Last I saw was one or two killed.
That's kind of amazing to think about how far forecasting, preparedness and awareness have come to have this kind of event and a very small loss of life.

 

Had this conversation with a friend today.

Seems we are building more and in places we didn't back when. Maybe that's not so, dunno.

It'd be interesting to see land plots or photographs from years back.

 

In 2006 there were only 10 storms after there were 28 the year before. It spiked up closer to the average of about 15 the next couple of years, and then dipped back to nine in 2009.
N is the 14th letter of the alphabet, so we're pretty close to the average this year.

 

That's definitely why so many of these recent storms are among the costliest in U.S. history. A bull in a china shop racks up a much bigger bill than one tearing ass through a pasture.

 

Imagine people on the Southern coastlines seeing some big clouds blowing in on the horizon in, say, 1850.
No TV, no radio, no telephones ... no anything. Must have been terrifying when a rainy day turned into a Cat 3 hurricane.

 

Honest question, and feel free to move this to the political thread if necessary, but I'm not necessarily trying to pick a politics fight.

Why does it seem that every time the topic of climate change comes up, those on the right side of the aisle get defensive and try to turn it into a liberal conspiracy? Is it because academia skews to the left in general? The future and health of the planet, to me, should be an apolitical issue that everyone should be concerned with. But it always turns into another political pissing match.

 

I've thought about that before. Now we know a week in advance a storm is building and possible tracks. Since sailors first visited the Caribbean and people started living along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, everyone knew what time of year was storm season, but they really didn't know what was going to hit them until it did. Even in 1954 when Hazel hit, folks had some warning but not nearly enough.