As a meteorologist, Hurricane Ian is the nightmare storm I worry about most

This is the kind of storm that destroys a community forever.

Read the whole story

 

[Uragan]

Sincere question: why does the media send reporters/meteorologists to cover hurricanes on-site, in the middle of rain and growing wind gusts?

I understand being on-site immediately after the event passes, but why are they sent out into the bad weather itself?

There's decent debate on the topic:
the Case Against Sending TV Reporters Out in Hurricanes
In Defense of the TV Reporter Standing Outside During a Hurricane

 

[JerryLove]

"EVEN THE WAFFLE HOUSES ARE CLOSING —"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_House_Index

That's how you know the shit's really hit the fan.

Yeah, and this escalated quickly. My rule of thumb when I lived in Florida was to shelter in place for a Cat 2 or less and evacuate for Cat 3 or more. This spun up from relatively weak to a monster so quickly that it would have caught me off-guard and probably unable to evacuate in time. I hope this doesn't end up being as ugly as I fear it will.

In that regard it's a *lot* like Charlie was.

Charlie was originally supposed to land near Bradenton as a Cat 1. It stopped, strengthened, and made a right turn into Port Charlotte as a Cat 4.

Ian was supposed to pass off the west cost of St.Pete as a Cat 3 (2 if wind shear got it); but veered right and is hitting about the same area Charlie did as a Cat 4.

 

[PhaseShifter]

"EVEN THE WAFFLE HOUSES ARE CLOSING —"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_House_Index

That's how you know the shit's really hit the fan.

True.

A bit over a decade ago, I worked at a hotel during a winter weather incident where most businesses in the area were shut down for about a week. As soon as the weather reports indicated what was about to happen, the manager of the nearest Waffle house booked a couple of rooms for their off-shift employees to stay in while the roads were impassable.

When it comes to being prepared for disasters, Waffle House doesn't fuck around.

 

[thrillgore]

Well at least they have a Governor with his head on straight, and not some tRumpian fool that pulls political stunts for the optics. They should be fine.

In all seriousness, good luck to the people of Florida, sounds like you are going to need it.

Death Santis and all Florida republicans should decline hurricane Ian aid and pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Suggestion: let’s pause the dart throwing until the storm passes and we’ve helped everyone reach some level of safety.

Yeah and how has that worked out for us?

Damn dude, read the room.

 

[mmiller7]

Can I ask what is particularly unusual about Ian that makes it this triple threat, as opposed to a normal hurricane? Not critiquing your writeup, but the media seems to over-dramatize at least 2 hurricanes/storms every year and so for me alert fatigue has really set in.

Is it the size (beyond just being a Cat 4, since that doesn't seem that abnormal)? Location of where it will make landfall? Unusual storm surge potential? Is it that the storm is so slow (which I believe is something climate change may be worsening)? And is this something that seems to be a more frequent trend for these storms? Thanks!

This feels like where I'm at.

In VA I was driving to work thru the downpours of "superstorm sandy"...it was wetter than normal and only mildly annoying when we were told corporate in DC was sent home we weren't until local power went out. Then I drove thru downpours going back home, but it was just a longer version of an afternoon thunderstorm.

I'm trying to decide if I should go visit some friends towards the Norfolk VA area this weekend or cancel plans we had made...and depending who you ask it may just be rainy or may be SHTF.

 

[Deleted member 174040]

Sincere question: why does the media send reporters/meteorologists to cover hurricanes on-site, in the middle of rain and growing wind gusts?

I understand being on-site immediately after the event passes, but why are they sent out into the bad weather itself?

There's decent debate on the topic:
the Case Against Sending TV Reporters Out in Hurricanes
In Defense of the TV Reporter Standing Outside During a Hurricane

Hey Lee: Next time we want a live report from you or Berger…on-site.

 

[ip_what]

I’ve been looking at a lot of maps of the Florida Gulf Coast these last few days trying to get a better sense of where people are and how bad it is going to be since my in laws live in St. Pete’s. Fortunately it looks like their property is going to escape the worst of it (and they’ve evacuated), but man, Cape Coral is probably just going to be gone.

Off topic, but I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole looking at satellite maps of the Naples area. Locals probably know this story, but there’s a whole city-sized grid of roads just east of Naples clearly visible on aerial maps with a few hilarious Google street views available. Turns out it was a 90 square mile real estate scam/environmental disaster. These brothers in the 50’s mostly drained this huge chunk of the Everglades built a ton of (shitty) roads, sold off lots, and then just never built any houses. I guess I never realized how far back the history of Florida men went. Development/scam was called Golden Gate Estates, if anyone else is looking for a diversion.

 

[Jackattak]

Damn dude, read the room.

It did the same thing in another thread yesterday. Best thing we can do is stop quoting it and ignore it.

 

[Rauth85]

I’ve been looking at a lot of maps of the Florida Gulf Coast these last few days trying to get a better sense of where people are and how bad it is going to be since my in laws live in St. Pete’s. Fortunately it looks like their property is going to escape the worst of it (and they’ve evacuated), but man, Cape Coral is probably just going to be gone.

Off topic, but I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole looking at satellite maps of the Naples area. Locals probably know this story, but there’s a whole city-sized grid of roads just east of Naples clearly visible on aerial maps with a few hilarious Google street views available. Turns out it was a 90 square mile real estate scam/environmental disaster. These brothers in the 50’s mostly drained this huge chunk of the Everglades built a ton of (shitty) roads, sold off lots, and then just never built any houses. I guess I never realized how far back the history of Florida men went. Development/scam was called Golden Gate Estates, if anyone else is looking for a diversion.

Sounds like houston.

OMG what a hell https://www.google.com/maps/place/Golde ... 81.6865796

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Golde ... 81.6865796

 

[Uragan]

Can I ask what is particularly unusual about Ian that makes it this triple threat, as opposed to a normal hurricane? Not critiquing your writeup, but the media seems to over-dramatize at least 2 hurricanes/storms every year and so for me alert fatigue has really set in.

Is it the size (beyond just being a Cat 4, since that doesn't seem that abnormal)? Location of where it will make landfall? Unusual storm surge potential? Is it that the storm is so slow (which I believe is something climate change may be worsening)? And is this something that seems to be a more frequent trend for these storms? Thanks!

This feels like where I'm at.

In VA I was driving to work thru the downpours of "superstorm sandy"...it was wetter than normal and only mildly annoying when we were told corporate in DC was sent home we weren't until local power went out. Then I drove thru downpours going back home, but it was just a longer version of an afternoon thunderstorm.

I'm trying to decide if I should go visit some friends towards the Norfolk VA area this weekend or cancel plans we had made...and depending who you ask it may just be rainy or may be SHTF.

Current track looks like no real impact to Tidewater. I'd go, honestly.

 

[mjeffer]

While I'm glad my parents built that Summer cabin in North Carolina, I'm no longer sure it's far enough away. Gonna go right over our house in Orlando and the cabin in NC.

I do like their chances in the Blue Mountains against what will likely by then be a tropical storm versus being in Orlando right now.

If it's in the Blue Ridge mountains you probably just have to worry about some heavy rain. That's pretty far west into NC. That can still be very dangerous, particularly if you're in a flood prone area, but it's doubtful it would get hit by even tropical storm level winds.

 

[Uragan]

Well at least they have a Governor with his head on straight, and not some tRumpian fool that pulls political stunts for the optics. They should be fine.

In all seriousness, good luck to the people of Florida, sounds like you are going to need it.

Death Santis and all Florida republicans should decline hurricane Ian aid and pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Suggestion: let’s pause the dart throwing until the storm passes and we’ve helped everyone reach some level of safety.

Yeah and how has that worked out for us?

Damn dude, read the room.

This is not a new room. We have been in this one many times.

And people have called you out on your edgelord "antics" many, many times in the past.

 

[pokrface]

directly quoting from the article:

As a forecaster you worry about three primary threats from hurricanes—strong winds, storm surge, and inland rainfall.

Well yes. But my question is, why is this particular hurricane somehow different in these threat assessments to the essentially yearly hits that Florida takes? Why would the storm surge be worse? Why would the rainfall be worse?

Why is this particular storm exceptional, and of particular interest to me is whether these exceptions are part of any evolving patterns, or just freak bad luck? Because meteorologists have started calling "once in a several-century storms" EVERY YEAR for like the last half decade. So either their models aren't very good at statistics (unlikely) or something not included in standard models is changing, and so what (specifically, not just generically global warming) is changing about these storms that is making this the new normal?

In no particular order: the rainfall is going to be worse because the storm lacks steering currents, so rather than zipping through, it's going to do a mini-Harvey and move very slowly along its track. The slower it moves, the more rainfall it dumps.

Storm surge is driven primarily by wind, and geography plays a role. Tropical cyclones rotate counterclockwise, and so they have a "good side" and a "bad side"—the part that sweeps in from the water drags more surge in with it. With Ian, the "bad side" is the southern-ish side of the storm, as the counterclockwise circulation pulls water along over land. The area with the 12-16ft forecasted surge is on the "bad side" and is the recipient of bad luck and strong winds.

The cyclone's winds themselves are a function of lots of things, including how much wind shear exists along the thing's path, because wind shear helps slow down cyclone organization. But the major factor that drives the winds is the heat of the water, and the gulf in September is basically the temperature of a warm bathtub. This can help trigger an effect called rapid intensification, which is IIRC what Ian has gone through.

So, the rainfall/wind/storm surge factors are interlinked, but require lots of bad luck to all be severe at the same time. In most cases, either there's an intensity falloff in winds that damps down the surge as the thing tracks toward land, or the track itself turns out to be aimed such that the nearest population centers aren't on the "bad" side of the storm.

And, finally, yes, climate change is contributing to the increasing intensity of tropical cyclones.

 

[JohnDeL]

I've sailed through the ICW in Florida's panhandle. Places like Panama City and Destin are still recovering from Hurricane Michale in 2018.

I suspect that this will create much the same level of destruction in the Fort Myers area, which is a shame because it is beautiful, historic, and full of nice, friendly people.

 

[redbike]

I’ve been looking at a lot of maps of the Florida Gulf Coast these last few days trying to get a better sense of where people are and how bad it is going to be since my in laws live in St. Pete’s. Fortunately it looks like their property is going to escape the worst of it (and they’ve evacuated), but man, Cape Coral is probably just going to be gone.

Off topic, but I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole looking at satellite maps of the Naples area. Locals probably know this story, but there’s a whole city-sized grid of roads just east of Naples clearly visible on aerial maps with a few hilarious Google street views available. Turns out it was a 90 square mile real estate scam/environmental disaster. These brothers in the 50’s mostly drained this huge chunk of the Everglades built a ton of (shitty) roads, sold off lots, and then just never built any houses. I guess I never realized how far back the history of Florida men went. Development/scam was called Golden Gate Estates, if anyone else is looking for a diversion.

Florida real estate scams date back far enough to have been reliable fodder for punch lines in Marx Brothers movies.

 

[JerryLove]

As for Florida, I dislike their Governor and his BS tactics but I don't wish those in Ian's path any harm. I just wonder how we could capture all that wind energy and water to use elsewhere...

And yet these people are why we have Desantis.. They're why we had Trump, they're why we had Bush..

So because less than half the voters in FL voted for Trump, everyone in FL deserves to get hit with a Cat 4 hurricane?

Perhaps you can expand on this a little more? What are your criteria for who deserves to die and who does not?

 

[Jackattak]

While I'm glad my parents built that Summer cabin in North Carolina, I'm no longer sure it's far enough away. Gonna go right over our house in Orlando and the cabin in NC.

I do like their chances in the Blue Mountains against what will likely by then be a tropical storm versus being in Orlando right now.

If it's in the Blue Ridge mountains you probably just have to worry about some heavy rain. That's pretty far west into NC. That can still be very dangerous, particularly if you're in a flood prone area, but it's doubtful it would get hit by even tropical storm level winds.

Yeah I remember one of the hurricanes from last year made it up there too. It was rainy and windy but that was all. They're actually up the mountain so flooding isn't an issue (but landslides are).

 

[Burned]

I've sailed through the ICW in Florida's panhandle. Places like Panama City and Destin are still recovering from Hurricane Michale in 2018.

I suspect that this will create much the same level of destruction in the Fort Myers area, which is a shame because it is beautiful, historic, and full of nice, friendly people.

My cousin used to live in Biloxi. There are still open spaces from Camille (1969).

 

[JerryLove]

I’ve been looking at a lot of maps of the Florida Gulf Coast these last few days trying to get a better sense of where people are and how bad it is going to be since my in laws live in St. Pete’s. Fortunately it looks like their property is going to escape the worst of it (and they’ve evacuated), but man, Cape Coral is probably just going to be gone.

Off topic, but I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole looking at satellite maps of the Naples area. Locals probably know this story, but there’s a whole city-sized grid of roads just east of Naples clearly visible on aerial maps with a few hilarious Google street views available. Turns out it was a 90 square mile real estate scam/environmental disaster. These brothers in the 50’s mostly drained this huge chunk of the Everglades built a ton of (shitty) roads, sold off lots, and then just never built any houses. I guess I never realized how far back the history of Florida men went. Development/scam was called Golden Gate Estates, if anyone else is looking for a diversion.

That is basically how Cape Coral came to exist.

 

[The Dark]

I lived in Orlando when Hurricane Charley hit Florida in 2004. That hurricane had a track similar to Ian's. Like Ian seems to be doing, Charley unexpectedly veered east toward Charlotte County and made landfall at Category 3 or 4. If I still lived in Florida, I absolutely would have planned on Ian veering east--not for meteorological reasons but out of experience. Even the much-weakened Charley that hit Orlando caused a lot of damage.

I like Florida, but I'm glad I no longer live so close to a coastline.

Glad to see you corrected the 2014 typo. I remember the Year of Four Hurricanes well, because I was also in Orlando for Charley, and then was down in Lakeland for Frances, Jeanne, and Crazy Ivan. That season was bad enough that I didn't have to look up any of the storm names or spellings, because they are that entrenched in my mind. My parents were among the many Central Floridians re-roofing after Charley, and my college had to shut down for a week mid-semester waiting for power to be restored to the campus.

 

[pokrface]

Hey Lee: Next time we want a live report from you or Berger…on-site.

As a veteran of more than a dozen of these awful things: not a fucking chance. I'm the first one evacuating when a hurricane heads toward H-town. And I'm counting the minutes until i can move away from the gulf coast and never come back.

 

[laggyNgroovy]

I live in houston and spacecityweather.com has been my goto resource for weather for years. I have also been reading Ars for years.


I just finally put two and two together about the author, it is kind of embarrassing.

Then you may not know he was also "The SciGuy" at the Houston Chronicle for a while as well.

 

[JohnDeL]

Off topic, but I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole looking at satellite maps of the Naples area. Locals probably know this story, but there’s a whole city-sized grid of roads just east of Naples clearly visible on aerial maps with a few hilarious Google street views available. Turns out it was a 90 square mile real estate scam/environmental disaster. These brothers in the 50’s mostly drained this huge chunk of the Everglades built a ton of (shitty) roads, sold off lots, and then just never built any houses. I guess I never realized how far back the history of Florida men went. Development/scam was called Golden Gate Estates, if anyone else is looking for a diversion.

Oh, it goes quite a bit further back than that.

 

[Mechjaz]

I live in houston and spacecityweather.com has been my goto resource for weather for years. I have also been reading Ars for years.


I just finally put two and two together about the author, it is kind of embarrassing.

You want your noodle really baked? I run the Space City Weather backend.

Whoa.

 

[Greho]

Eric is absolutely correct that communities will be lost forever. This storm will, as Michael did four years ago, wipe out swathes of “Old Florida.”

It won’t be reflected in population, because so dang many people are moving to Florida every year, and because developers will snap up destroyed properties and build shiny new coastal houses and condos.

It will be reflected in culture. Michael was the final straw for Apalachicola oysters, which are now off-limits for farming until at least 2025, after massive freshwater inflows from flooding related to Michael destabilized an already damaged oyster population.

When a city and a community thrive from aquaculture, and it’s abruptly yanked away, what is next for them?

Neighborhoods and communities in Bay County were smashed. A few derelict houses remain, proof that it’s not just a situation of “too poor to paint, too proud to white-wash,” but an actual inability to afford to either repair or rebuild.

Gentrification is coming for those communities. There will be pretty new buildings and houses, but few new schools, as so many moving in are retirees who are moving into an idealized Florida. (Disney isn’t the only place in Florida where people are living a fantasy.)

I’m sure there will be stories like this from southwest Florida. Events which will never make the national news, but will erode the spirit of old communities, until they, too, are replaced by yet more concrete high-rises and denizens of golf-cart-centric “communities” like The Villages. (Yuck.)

One day, we will realize what we lost in Old Florida, and it will be far too late to save it.

 

[GreenEnvy]

I've been watching some of the public webcams in Fort Myers area.
The top feed here (and the site is likely overloaded so it's slow), has had a view of a hotel pool, which has progressively flooded over the last half hour:
https://www.pinkshell.com/live-webcams

This one is running smoother, but can't see much beach:
https://www.skylinewebcams.com/en/webca ... beach.html

 

[PhaseShifter]

Sincere question: why does the media send reporters/meteorologists to cover hurricanes on-site, in the middle of rain and growing wind gusts?

I understand being on-site immediately after the event passes, but why are they sent out into the bad weather itself?

Nerds are gonna nerd, and these are weather nerds.

...And some of them are drama queens, who are nowhere near the real danger of the storm.

If you search, you can find plenty of footage of those people staggering around as if the wind will blow them away at any moment, while people in the background walk around casually.

Of course, some are weather nerds as you say.

Hmm, I wonder if anyone's ever worked out a way to judge the actual windspeed in a video based on the types of debris blowing past?

 

[Veritas super omens]

As for Florida, I dislike their Governor and his BS tactics but I don't wish those in Ian's path any harm. I just wonder how we could capture all that wind energy and water to use elsewhere...

And yet these people are why we have Desantis.. They're why we had Trump, they're why we had Bush..

So because less than half the voters in FL voted for Trump, everyone in FL deserves to get hit with a Cat 4 hurricane?

Perhaps you can expand on this a little more? What are your criteria for who deserves to die and who does not?

Well....it was less than half of the voters. What is the saying? For evil to triumph it only needs "good" men to do nothing....

Devils advocate statement only. I wish no ill will and no storm damage on anyone. But I am also quite aware that my "wishes" have just as much to do with reality as the "thoughts and prayers"

 

[ZippyPeanut]

directly quoting from the article:

As a forecaster you worry about three primary threats from hurricanes—strong winds, storm surge, and inland rainfall.

Well yes. But my question is, why is this particular hurricane somehow different in these threat assessments to the essentially yearly hits that Florida takes? Why would the storm surge be worse? Why would the rainfall be worse?

Why is this particular storm exceptional, and of particular interest to me is whether these exceptions are part of any evolving patterns, or just freak bad luck? Because meteorologists have started calling "once in a several-century storms" EVERY YEAR for like the last half decade. So either their models aren't very good at statistics (unlikely) or something not included in standard models is changing, and so what (specifically, not just generically global warming) is changing about these storms that is making this the new normal?

In no particular order: the rainfall is going to be worse because the storm lacks steering currents, so rather than zipping through, it's going to do a mini-Harvey and move very slowly along its track. The slower it moves, the more rainfall it dumps.

Storm surge is driven primarily by wind, and geography plays a role. Tropical cyclones rotate counterclockwise, and so they have a "good side" and a "bad side"—the part that sweeps in from the water drags more surge in with it. With Ian, the "bad side" is the southern-ish side of the storm, as the counterclockwise circulation pulls water along over land. The area with the 12-16ft forecasted surge is on the "bad side" and is the recipient of bad luck and strong winds.

The cyclone's winds themselves are a function of lots of things, including how much wind shear exists along the thing's path, because wind shear helps slow down cyclone organization. But the major factor that drives the winds is the heat of the water, and the gulf in September is basically the temperature of a warm bathtub. This can help trigger an effect called rapid intensification, which is IIRC what Ian has gone through.

So, the rainfall/wind/storm surge factors are interlinked, but require lots of bad luck to all be severe at the same time. In most cases, either there's an intensity falloff in winds that damps down the surge as the thing tracks toward land, or the track itself turns out to be aimed such that the nearest population centers aren't on the "bad" side of the storm.

And, finally, yes, climate change is contributing to the increasing intensity of tropical cyclones.

^ This should be a promoted comment. It's a very informative contribution to the original article.

 

[Rauth85]

Sincere question: why does the media send reporters/meteorologists to cover hurricanes on-site, in the middle of rain and growing wind gusts?

I understand being on-site immediately after the event passes, but why are they sent out into the bad weather itself?

Nerds are gonna nerd, and these are weather nerds.

...And some of them are drama queens, who are nowhere near the real danger of the storm.

If you search, you can find plenty of footage of those people staggering around as if the wind will blow them away at any moment, while people in the background walk around casually.

Of course, some are weather nerds as you say.

Hmm, I wonder if anyone's ever worked out a way to judge the actual windspeed in a video based on the types of debris blowing past?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdRWGMyeSYY

 

[DCStone]

directly quoting from the article:

As a forecaster you worry about three primary threats from hurricanes—strong winds, storm surge, and inland rainfall.

Well yes. But my question is, why is this particular hurricane somehow different in these threat assessments to the essentially yearly hits that Florida takes? Why would the storm surge be worse? Why would the rainfall be worse?

Why is this particular storm exceptional, and of particular interest to me is whether these exceptions are part of any evolving patterns, or just freak bad luck? Because meteorologists have started calling "once in a several-century storms" EVERY YEAR for like the last half decade. So either their models aren't very good at statistics (unlikely) or something not included in standard models is changing, and so what (specifically, not just generically global warming) is changing about these storms that is making this the new normal?

IIUC (not guaranteed) part of it is that the Gulf is really warm and, because of the really quiet start to hurricane season, hasn't had much if any of that energy removed by prior storms passing through on different tracks. So Ian has picked up more energy than it would have in a busier season.

I'd be interested to know if this is also a contributing factor to the steering current interaction noted in the article, as that also seems to contribute to the 'triple threat'.

 

[nzod]

-- never mind, irrelevant --

 

[Deleted member 174040]

Sincere question: why does the media send reporters/meteorologists to cover hurricanes on-site, in the middle of rain and growing wind gusts?

I understand being on-site immediately after the event passes, but why are they sent out into the bad weather itself?

Nerds are gonna nerd, and these are weather nerds.

I never realized how just how much meteorologists were fans of the weather until a thought-to-be-improbable for our area occurrence took place in the atmosphere and as they realized it both the stoic older, male meteorologist and the pretty fashionable young meteorologist weather both lost their minds and positively geeked out together over what they were seeing. They sounded more like sports reporters.

 

[Greho]

I lived in Orlando when Hurricane Charley hit Florida in 2004. That hurricane had a track similar to Ian's. Like Ian seems to be doing, Charley unexpectedly veered east toward Charlotte County and made landfall at Category 3 or 4. If I still lived in Florida, I absolutely would have planned on Ian veering east--not for meteorological reasons but out of experience. Even the much-weakened Charley that hit Orlando caused a lot of damage.

I like Florida, but I'm glad I no longer live so close to a coastline.

Glad to see you corrected the 2014 typo. I remember the Year of Four Hurricanes well, because I was also in Orlando for Charley, and then was down in Lakeland for Frances, Jeanne, and Crazy Ivan. That season was bad enough that I didn't have to look up any of the storm names or spellings, because they are that entrenched in my mind. My parents were among the many Central Floridians re-roofing after Charley, and my college had to shut down for a week mid-semester waiting for power to be restored to the campus.

I don’t want to be nit-picky, but Ivan was 2004. I remember vividly. Our business opening in Pensacola was delayed by almost a year by damage and flooding from Ivan. Blue roofs everywhere. Contractors were swamped with work. I drove across that accursed temporary Escambia Bay bridge more times than I want to remember.

The name “Ivan” was retired after that year.

 

[Colm]

Sincere question: why does the media send reporters/meteorologists to cover hurricanes on-site, in the middle of rain and growing wind gusts?

I understand being on-site immediately after the event passes, but why are they sent out into the bad weather itself?

A weather channel crew set up in my friend's bar in Galveston during Harvey. He was floating in the street in an innertube behind the camera for all the live shots.

 

[SwordFishData]

I live in Lehigh Acres, just east of Fort Myers; the water in the street is already 18 inches deep. Granted, the water was up to 3 feet during Irma, and it still didn't get up to the houses (which are built on artificial rises). I REALLY hope this doesn't get worse, but it probably will.