New Hurricane Thread

Damage and deaths increase with each passing year just because of people moving in and higher construction prices.

 

Florida has about five times as many people living in it as it did 60 years ago. Most of 'em live near its coasts, too. It is inevitable that hurricanes would be more destructive. The one measurable effect of climate change that's just plain fact is sea level rise. This contributes to the extra destruction, but it's the desire of people to live in the risk zone that's the major factor.

 

Interesting read here. Essentially, wind shear should have taken this storm apart, but it didn't. Also, water in that part of the gulf was 2-4 degrees warmer than usual, allowing it to fuel itself right until the bitter end.

Why Hurricane Michael took everyone by surprise and what to expect after it's gone

 

The crazy thing is a Cat 4 storm slams Florida, and the bulk of the deaths from it are in Virginia. As of now, 11 people are dead, 5 in Va.

 

Flooding appears to be the cause of most of those Va. deaths. People driving in flood conditions. Another facet of storms for which I have only anecdotal data is that hurricanes seem to be a lot wetter than they once were. Torrential rains continue for hundreds and thousands of miles, or a storm stalls like Harvey and drowns Houston.

 

Yeah, most of the deaths in hurricanes are from flooding because people do dumb stuff.

 

Those are the initial deaths. More will follow.

My mother nearly became a casualty of Michael. She's on oxygen and uses a concentrator powered by electricity. We usually keep a 48 hour supply as backup, but we've been having difficulty with the oxygen company and the storm caught my parents at a time when they only had about a 7 hour supply. So of course the power went out and has been out for about 16 hours now.

My stubborn as a mule father decided to "stretch it out" by reducing her intake. I finally went over early this morning and forced the issue.

Sitting at the hospital now where she's doing great. But damn if it wasn't a stressful night. Lots of frail people don't survive the aftermath of these storms.

 

I hope your mom continues to improve.
I know at least one of the deaths related to Florence was when someone had a heart attack and EMS couldn't reach them.

 

Thanks. She'll be fine now that she's getting enough oxygen and she won't go home until the power is back. She may move to a hotel if it is going to take too long, though.

It's just a reminder of how quickly some people can move from a seemingly OK situation into a precarious one with just a little disruption.

There are always a few deaths after these storms that are the result of some kind of normally manageable condition becoming unmanageable quickly.

 

It’s not crazy. See Hurricane Camille, Cat 5, 1969, hit MS and then remnants destroyed Central VA. Over 100 deaths in VA alone.

These things are NOT just some bad rainstorm moving through. You have to watch these remnants almost as closely as a hurricane about to make landfall. Don’t stop paying attention just because it’s come ashore.

 

Pollution controls = regulation = $$$$$$ = bad for businesses.

The right doesn't want to burn trillions of dollars of potential economic growth into what they have convinced themselves is another Y2K hoax.

 

Not just that, but some of the more radical and popular "solutions" to climate change involve heavy taxation (to discourage use of fossil fuels) that seems designed to take us back to a 19th century standard of living. Those solutions ignore some realities, like the resistance and ability of developing nations to adopt newer, more expensive technologies; the devastating ripple effects it would have on first-world economies; and our ability as a species to adapt.
All for a problem we might or might not be able to solve, and that might or might not be as big an issue as it's hyped up to be. The climate change proclaimers keep moving the goal posts on the issue -- extending the timeline and the severity of its effects, even the very definition of what is and isn't climate change.
Skeptics are mocked when they point out that there was a week of 70-degree weather in the summer, for example, and told that weather and climate are two different things. At the same time, climate change disciples point to every bad hurricane, thunderstorm and blizzard as irrefutable proof of its existence. The level of hysteria grows tiresome pretty quickly.