Why Wilma Scares Me

Just in case you’re counting, Hurricane Wilma is currently 1735 miles southwest of me. That’s ‘as the crow flies’ miles. Because this hurricane is ready to make a sweeping right hand turn, it would have to travel significantly farther.

How can I be worried about something 1735 miles away? It’s easy – I’ve seen this scenario before. I didn’t live it. It predates me. I’ve studied it because it is the benchmark for New England hurricane grief.

Before you feel my pain, let me talk a little about my parents. They’re ensconced in Boynton Beach, FL. Hurricane Wilma is 640 miles south-southwest of them.

As it stands now, the official Hurricane Center prediction takes Wilma right over… or reasonably close to them. Though the storm will be coming over land, it’s swampy land. There’s warm water and low friction in the Everglades. It’s not perfect for a hurricane but it won’t kill it either.

My folks have hurricane shutters and live in a substantial building. I think they’ll be OK, though I’ll revisit this with them later today.

Here’s the one bit of good news. Hurricane Wilma will be ‘booking’ as she passes through Florida. Coast-to-coast will be 10, maybe 12 hours. The faster Hurricane Wilma moves, the sooner the trouble is over.

Nature adapts to this kind of trouble. Palm trees have decidedly less wind resistance than the deciduous trees we have here in Connecticut.

The Hurricane Center forecasts 110 mph winds at landfall in Florida, dropping to 80 mph by the time the storm reemerges in the Atlantic&#185. Even 80 mph, a small hurricane, is substantial if it passes close by. Most of us have never experienced 80 mph winds… and we’ve all seen plenty of wind damage.

The Hurricane Center used to talk about 80 mph storms as minimal hurricanes. They don’t anymore. That’s a change for the better.

I am anticipating moderate to severe damage on the West Coast of Florida with minimal to scattered moderate damage on the East Coast. There will be a much smaller radius of damage in the east.

Once the storm leaves Florida the guessing game begins. It will really accelerate. This is the part that starts resembling the Hurricane of ’38.

From PBS’ American Experience: Within 24 hours, the storm ripped into the New England shore with enough fury to set off seismographs in Sitka, Alaska. Traveling at a shocking 60 miles per hour — three times faster than most tropical storms — it was astonishingly swift and powerful, with peak wind gusts up to 186 m.p.h. The storm without a name turned into one of the most devastating storms recorded in North America. Over 600 people were killed, most by drowning. Another hundred were never found. Property damage was estimated at $300 million — over 8,000 homes were destroyed, 6,000 boats wrecked or damaged.

Though the storm struck Connecticut’s coast in Fairfield County, the strongest damage was experienced at the opposite end of the state and into Rhode Island.

Here’s what’s most troubling. A storm barreling up the East Coast will leave minimal time for warning. Look at the map. Florida to New Jersey in 24 hours! I couldn’t drive it that quickly.

To get a Hurricane Warning out 24 hours in advance would mean alerting most of the Northeast. An error of a few degrees in course could mean Atlantic City versus Boston.

And where would all these people go? Imagine sending everyone in Coastal New England west on I-95!

This is the worst case scenario. A direct hit to New England would cause as much destruction, and possibly as many deaths, as the unpredicted storm in 1938!

The current projections bring Hurricane Wilma far enough east to spare New England. But there is very little margin for error over a five day forecast. I’m certainly not confident in it. Just a few degrees off…

So now we wait and watch. Like I said, there will be lots of phone calls to Florida tomorrow. I want to make sure my parents have every possible advantage. Then we’ll bring the worries closer to home.

Hurricane Wilma scares me to the bone.

&#185 – The Hurricane Center readily admits, of all the things it does, predicting intensity is the thing it does worst.

I’m More Pessimistic About Hurricanes

Recently I was interviewed for an article in Business New Haven concerning hurricanes. I’ve linked to the text.

Over time I’ve become more pessimistic of what might happen in a repeat of the hurricane of ’38 scenario for Connecticut. There would be little time for warning and difficulty explaining where the damage might occur.

Even in 2005, a tragedy seems unavoidable. That’s not what I want to say, but it is a realistic expectation.

I’m glad to see, though Dr. Mel Goldstein and I were interviewed separately (I didn’t even know he had been interviewed), we are in agreement with our concern.

Unlike Katrina where good advice was ignored, I’m not sure what we could do today to help prepare us for a hurricane approaching us at 60 mph. The entire East Coast would need warning. What good would that do?

Continue reading “I’m More Pessimistic About Hurricanes”

I Didn’t Know I Was This Nice

My friend Farrell’s mom, Ruth, has been interviewed again about her escape from New Orleans.

Every time she tells the story, I become a bigger hero. It’s now the “Legend of Geoff Fox.”

Seriously, this was a call anyone with info would make to the parent of a close friend. I am glad Ruth escaped New Orleans unscathed. I’m glad she listened to her family and friends, because I know in her heart she very much wanted to stay.

The story from the Valley Gazette continues at the jump.

Continue reading “I Didn’t Know I Was This Nice”

Hurricane Gloria – 20 Years Ago Today

I came to Connecticut in May 1984. I thought I did a good job on the air, but being a little over-the-top was the only way I stood out from my competitors.

All that changed September 27, 1985 when Hurricane Gloria made landfall in Connecticut.

For me, it was a career changing event. It was a chance to let people know, though I might screw around when the weather was nice, I was trustworthy when weather was critical. At least that’s how I saw it.

1984 doesn’t seem so long ago, but it was eons ago in technology and forecasting technique. The possibility of this hurricane came up in a conversation five days before landfall. A friend noted an interesting system and some rudimentary computer guidance brought it vaguely up the coast.

As I remember it today, each successive day continued with the storm on a fairly consistent track.

Looking back, I realize I was a sucker. These forecasts were well beyond the capability of the available models. That they were right was dumb luck!

A few days before Gloria struck, I started sharing my concerns with my boss and he put together a plan. Again, in hindsight we were so innocent. Today, wall-to-wall coverage would begin days before the storm struck. In 1985, with the storm due midday, we planned on running Good Morning America in its entirety!

I stayed after the late news, doing cut-ins through the night. No one was watching, but I was there.

We had little morning news presence back then. I don’t even remember who it was, but a single person produced and reported in the morning.

At 7:00 AM we switched to GMA. Every half hour their meteorologist reported the national weather, including the upcoming hurricane. The graphics on GMA were wrong&#185. Every half hour I’d follow Dave Murray, asking the viewers to believe me and not him.

Before long, we were on-the-air non-stop. The station really did an amazing job. I still remember some live shots, especially David Henry’s from Bridgeport, as if they happened yesterday.

Gloria had been a Category 3 hurricane with 125 mph winds, but was a shadow of her former self when she hit Long Island and then Connecticut. Officially, Gloria hit Connecticut with 90 mph sustained winds. Today, I doubt even that number. Whatever it was, it was frightening. Half the state lost power.

My friend Diane Smith lost a beautiful sailboat. Other friends and co-workers would lose trees and power – in some cases for a week or more.

I watched the storm on the Weather Service’s ancient radar. As it approached Connecticut, the eye opened up. We had one eyewall pass overhead and that was it. The southern half of this north moving storm no longer existed.

By nightfall Gloria was gone and Connecticut was picking up the pieces.

A day or two later in the New Haven Register, Carolyn Wyman didn’t talk about my coverage, she wrote about my disheveled hair, wondering if it was an affectation. I was crushed. I wonder if Carolyn (who seems like a nice person) knows I still remember? I wonder if she still feels that way?

On second thought, maybe I don’t want to know.

Hurricane Gloria was where I first realized, no matter how important it made my job, I didn’t want really bad weather to come here. Some forecasters do. Some meteorologists salivate over tornadoes and hurricanes. I, on the other hand, had my fill on that one day.

Years later, Governor (now prisoner) John Rowland told me he was waiting for houses to start blowing through the streets of Waterbury. To some, the storm was a disappointment. To others, especially along the Connecticut shoreline, it was a few hours of terror.

I am looking forward to seeing some of the old video and trying to remember what it was like watching it the first time. I am petrified that among the old clips will be a little cut of me, 20 years younger, looking like I was 15.

&#185 – As far as I could tell, a graphic artist preparing the maps traced the correct forecast track. Unfortunately, the line she/he drew wasn’t centered on the pen, but was actually to the right of it. That was common back then.

Now It’s Rita That’s Got Me Worried

I should have started this over the weekend, because a new storm was the source of almost immediate ‘meteo chatter.’

Ophelia passed to my south. Phillippe is out-to-sea where he will cause little harm. Rita is in a bad spot with the promise of intensification.

There’s no doubt, New Orleans is the most vulnerable city for hurricanes in the US – duh. After that, Key West and Galveston are high up on the list. The official track projection for this storm, still a tropical storm and not a hurricane, impacts both cities!

Key West is an island with little land significantly above sea level. It is possible that during a significant hurricane (which Rita probably won’t be at the time) the entire island could briefly disappear as it was overwashed. There wouldn’t be the lasting flooding of New Orleans.

Galveston too is an island and prone to hurricane surges. Isaac’s Storm, the scariest book I’ve ever read, describes Galveston during the 1900 Hurricane. It stands as America’s most deadly natural disaster. Somewhere between 6-12,000 were killed, with most bodies never found.

From Wikipedia:

Since its formal founding in 1839, the city of Galveston had weathered numerous storms, which the city survived with ease. Residents believed any future storms would be no worse than previous events. In order to provide an official meteorological statement on the threat of hurricanes, Galveston Weather Bureau section director Isaac Cline wrote an 1891 article in the Galveston News in which he argued not only that a seawall was not needed to protect the city, but that it would be impossible for a hurricane of significant strength to strike the island.

The seawall was not built, and development activities on the island actively increased its vulnerability to storms. Sand dunes along the shore were cut down to fill low areas in the city, removing what little barrier there was to the Gulf of Mexico.

Rita isn’t much more than 24 hours from Key West. If the people there are lucky, the storm won’t intensify much, nor will it jog to the north.

Galveston has a bigger question mark. The five day forecast from the Hurricane Center aims squarely at Galveston (for purposes of this entry, let the cone of uncertainty be damned).

If you were living there, what would you do today? The storm is five days away and most likely will find another track before it arrives… or maybe not.

Flying With The Hurricane Hunters

Back in 1996 I took a ride with the Hurricane Hunters to visit Hurricane Bertha. As long as I’ve had websites, I’ve always found a place to post it. You can find it here. I think it’s interesting reading, especially during hurricane season.

Connecticut Snow Totals

This seems to be a question of general interest. How much snow did Connecticut get? The Weather Service, since their switch to automated readings, has become less helpful in this regard. However, the Connecticut Department of Transportation does keep good records of each snow storm.

Blogger’s note: This entry first ran in 2005. It gets found again each winter. In February 2008, I updated the snowfall link to CT DOT which seems to change on a yearly basis. Now, in February 2010 it’s changed again!

This seems to be a question of general interest. How much snow did Connecticut get? The Weather Service, since their switch to automated readings, has become less helpful in this regard. However, the Connecticut Department of Transportation does keep good records of each snow storm.

Here’s the only problem: DOT clears the recording area and starts fresh for each reading. That gives higher totals than standard readings because there is much less settling in the DOT method. However, it’s the best, most consistent source.

Any port in a storm, I suppose.

Remind Me Not to Go To Moscow

The mayor of Moscow, Russia has decided there should be a penalty for bad weather forecasts. What is he trying to do… become personally responsible for my plunge into the abyss of forecaster’s hell? I’m tense enough already about today’s potential storm.

Continue reading “Remind Me Not to Go To Moscow”

The Snow is Finished

Yesterday was my day off – but how could I not work with a major storm coming! I went to work about 2:00 PM and, with Gil Simmons, did cut-ins through the afternoon. Then, I was on the news at 5, 6, 10 and 11, did more cut-ins through the evening and cut some special forecasts which ran on the station’s Internet site.

The snow didn’t come up to my expectations, though it was pretty bad. Some areas did get the two feet I called for. Most did not.

However, I didn’t get more than one or two small complaints – and I got nearly 700 emails this weekend! So, the forecast must have been close enough to prepare people for what came – and it was pretty awful.

After a storm like this I like to write and thanks everyone who went out and measured snow or sent me a snapshot. Attached below is what I sent.

Continue reading “The Snow is Finished”

Asian Earthquake

I really haven’t written much about last week’s massive earthquake. It’s not that I haven’t been thinking about it. Like everyone else, it has been impossible for me to look away.

On of the more interesting aspects of this story, though certainly minor in comparison to the human tragedy, is how it has unfolded.

In 2004 we are used to getting all of our news all at once. In fact, the 24/7 cable outfits often have trouble with big stories because they’re able to pretty much cover them as they happen and that’s that. After a while extended coverage becomes repetitious and boring.

This story has dribbled out. I saw the first earthquake bulletins before I went to bed, a few hours after the quake had taken place. It was originally labeled a magnitude 8.9, then upped to a 9 (not an insignificant difference as this is a logarithmic, not linear scale).

It wasn’t until the next day that we heard about the tsunami. Then a little later we heard from people and a little bit later still we saw video.

Even today there is a lot about this story that is unknown. There are islands full of people that are so isolated no one knows what’s really happened, though speculation centers on the worst. There have been dozens of additional earthquakes, aftershocks but substantial earthquakes, in that region (around Sumatra and the Adaman and Nicobar Islands).

There will be, unfortunately, more deaths reported. Where the destruction has been the greatest there will also be disease.

There is much more new information in this story to be reported.

The Guiness Book of World Records shows a flood in 1887 killed 900,000, an earthquake in 1556 killed 830,000, and a more recent earthquake killed 655,000 in 1976&#185. This most recent quake and tsunami still has the potential to top the list.

&#185 – Amazingly, all three of those disasters took place in China.

Asteroid 2004 MN4 – Who Invited Him?

Forget Hubble and all the other fancy astronomical hardware. Sometimes the most interesting finds come from more pedestrian equipment. Take the case of Asteroid 2004 MN4, discovered in June at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.

The find was made by astronomers from the University of Hawaii taking part in an asteroid survey. That they found it was luck. Like most other minor space discoveries, the information was dissemenated and filed away. Then, on December 18, another spotting from Australia. After that dozens of other observations were made.

Now with multiple sightings it was possible to figure out the orbit of this chunk of space rock… a flying mountain if you will. It looked like it could cross the Earth’s orbit and it was assigned a probability, a mathematical chance, it would hit the Earth.

Excuse me? Hit the Earth? No, really. In fact, it was possible to come up with a date: April 13, 2029

That’s the bad news. The good news was the probability was only one chance in 233. NASA said that’s “unusual enough to merit special monitoring by astronomers, but should not be of public concern.”

Then a day or two later, with more observations and number crunching, the probability changed. Now it was one chance in 63. Interesting, but not alarming for an event 25 years in the future&#185.

It’s changed again.

On Christmas Eve a little gift from NASA scientists. Now it’s one chance in 45… a 97.8% chance of missing… or for my fellow pessimists, a 2.2% chance that April 2029 might be a really good time to run up your VISA with no intention of paying it off.

On the Torino scale of 1-10, this little gem has suddenly gone to a 4. It’s the first object to even make it to two!

A close encounter, with 1% or greater chance of a collision capable of causing regional devastation.

We’re talking about an object estimated to have a 1,250 foot diameter weighing 1.5 billion pounds&#187. When it hits the atmosphere it will be traveling at 27,000 miles per hour. That would create an explosion equivalent to 1,400 million tons of TNT!

For comparison, the nuclear bomb “Little Boy,” dropped by the United States on Hiroshima, Japan, had a yield of only about 0.013 megatons. The impacts which created the Barringer Meteor Crater or caused the Tunguska event in Siberia are estimated to be in the 10-20 megaton range. The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa was the equivalent of roughly 200 megatons.

So, we’re talking large, but this is not the magnitude of the event that took out the dinosaurs. It would still be devastating. Certainly it would reshape any land it impacted. A water impact would cause tsunamis of epic proportion.

Again, this is 25 years away and the calculations are likely to change. Still, if this is the first you’re hearing about it, aren’t you surprised there hasn’t been more play in the mainstream press?

The way this works is, someone, somewhere with the power to influence other news budgets (NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, etc.) will run it and this story will pick up some traction. Until then, you heard it here first.

&#185 – I believe I have already scheduled teeth cleaning for that day.

&#178 – My conversion from 7.5e+10 kg to pounds is shaky at best. I’ll be glad to entertain corrections. No rush – we’ve got a few decades.

Flying Through A Hurricane

Back in July 1996, I flew through the eye of Hurricane Bertha. I wrote about it then, but it’s been mostly forgotten. I thought this might be a good time to repost it here:

The most common question I’ve been asked the past two days is, “Why would you ever fly into the eye of a hurricane?” Fair question.

First of all, I have convinced myself that it isn’t dangerous. Think about it. Career government employees. Not exactly a prescription for risk takers. The plane, a 31 year old Lockheed C-130 Hercules, seems incredibly sturdy and is as stylish as a UPS truck.

Second, it sounded like a great story. Interesting, informative, maybe even a little exciting.

Any time there’s a tropical system worth investigating, the Air Force flies to a forward base and sets up shop. The idea is to have two planes with almost continuous penetrations of the eye. This week, the 53rd Weather Recon Squadron USAF (reserve) was at Homestead AFB in Florida. It’s an eerie starting point, considering wreckage from Hurricane Andrew still litters the base and surrounding town.

Flight time to Bertha would be about 2 hours and we’d be in the air for anywhere from 10 to 12 hours. That meant 69,000 pounds of fuel in the wings, under the wings, and in a 10,000 pound tank adjacent to the port-a-john in the ‘cabin’. And enough noise from the four prop engines to force everyone to wear earplugs or earphones.

Being on the ground during a major hurricane will change you. They’re not surprises like tornadoes or earthquakes, yet they cause damage that’s often more widespread and impossible to prevent. And there’s the paradox of the eye, an area where the strongest and weakest winds are amazingly close. A hurricane’s eye passing overhead is so enticing that people have been known to leave shelters only to be ‘zapped’ as the storm started up again.

Leaving Homestead, we flew directly toward the storm. Miami Center didn’t need to vector us – we weren’t going to run into much company. Not many people do this as a hobby. At 20,000 feet the ride was smooth.

A little over 100 miles out, we descended to 10,000 feet and started taking readings. Temperature, dew point, barometer, wind speed and direction. The sea surface below had enough whitecaps and spray to show the wind direction, even at altitude. Intermittently there were patches of green. The Air Force manual carried by just about everyone on board said that that was an indication of winds over 40 knots. The clouds thickened. There was rain, hitting the windshield at almost 300 mph. My photographer, J.P. Coleman, and I made our way up the stairs onto the flight deck.

My commercial flight to Florida had two in the cockpit. This flight had five, and they all seemed to be working. I started to interview the pilot, a Lt. Colonel, until he stopped for a radio call and then a checklist. The radar, mounted on the plane’s dash, about where the radar detector is on my car’s dash, started showing a somewhat circular green area. This was Bertha.

The blip moved closer to the radar’s center as we approached. I started thinking about the turbulence. How the plane would pitch and roll. How my stomach would trick me into thinking I was about to die, when I was only going to throw up. There are hand holds in the cockpit and I grabbed one, but a funny thing happened. Nothing!

All right, not quite nothing but close. We shook for ten, maybe twelve seconds before settling back to smooth flight.

As it turns out, Bertha was “Big” Bertha because of size, not strength. The eye was not round, but oval. It had more holes than Albert Hall (If you understand this, Ann B. Davis is Schultzy, if you don’t she’s Alice).

The eye was where the real work would be done. In the back, a Master Sergeant prepared a cylindrical instrument pod called a radiosonde. He watched the wind speed at altitude. From 70 to 50 to 30 knots. And then to single digits. As the wind dipped he typed “launch” on a keyboard and the radiosonde slipped out the tube. We knew from the rate of descent that its parachute had opened. It was transmitting back to the plane while falling at about 1,000 feet per minute. As soon as we got the numbers, they were satellited to the Hurricane Center and relayed to the National Weather Service data feeds. All of a sudden, anyone with a computer could get the results of Bertha’s physical.

These numbers are still the absolutely best way to fix the hurricane’s location and estimate her strength. Lower pressure, higher temperature, bigger storm. There is currently no better way to know this than by penetrating in a plane.

And that’s the way the day went. Ten and a half hours in the air with hardly a bump. We flew 100 plus mile legs in a bowtie shaped pattern, passing through the eyewall four times.

So, what did I get out of it? Well, two live phoners, from the flight deck, at 6 and 11. The airchecks are nowhere to be found, but I’m told it sounded exotic and dangerous. That’s probably because we went from the plane to the ground via single sideband shortwave radio and had to say, “over” all the time. Today (July 11) , we aired two separate packages at 6 and 11. And, I’ve gotten a little more insight into the data I use from the National Hurricane Center.

I’d do it again

Ivan Has a Growth Spurt

The Hurricane Center has just upped Hurricane Ivan to a Category 5 with top winds of 160 mph with higher gusts! That means winds with 2.5 times the force of Frances at landfall and four times the potential to cause damage.

Complete roof failure on many residences and industrial buildings. Some complete building failures with small utility buildings blown over or away. All shrubs, trees, and signs blown down. Complete destruction of mobile homes. Severe and extensive window and door damage. Low-lying escape routes are cut by rising water 3-5 hours before arrival of the hurricane center. Major damage to lower floors of all structures located less than 15 ft above sea level and within 500 yards of the shoreline. Massive evacuation of residential areas on low ground within 5-10 miles (8-16 km) of the shoreline may be required. There were no Category Five hurricanes in 1995, 1996, or 1997. Hurricane Gilbert of 1988 was a Category Five hurricane at peak intensity and is the strongest Atlantic tropical cyclone of record.

Tonight, my friend Bob and I were chatting about hurricanes. We realized, as bad as this season is, deaths have been low. This is 100% attributable to satellite technology. In fact, Bob suggested whoever ‘invented’ weather satellites deserved a Nobel prize for that alone!

I worry about the people on Jamaica. This storm is steaming right toward them and there’s really nowhere to hide.

Not only will the wind be destructive, but Jamaica has topography which will bring out the worst in a hurricane.

Jamaica is about the size of Connecticut in the United States. It measures about 4,400 square miles (11,400 square kilometers).

Stretches 146 miles from east to west. Varies between 22 and 51 miles from north to south. And in many ways is more like a continent than an island.

It has rugged mountain ranges, with Blue Mountain Peak, the highest point, soaring 7,402 feet. It has miles of white beaches, bordered by the blue Caribbean.

It has 120 rivers flowing from the mountains to the coast. And it has great central plains, fertile agricultural lands, towering cliffs, magnificent waterfalls, dense tropical forests…and eternal summer.

From 1uptravel

Seven thousand foot mountains will surely wring more than the Hurricane Center’s estimate of 5-7″ of rain. A direct, or even near, hit will mean catastrophic mudslides and flooding.

This storm is not done yet.

Frances And My Pact With The Devil

I just read the Hurricane Center’s technical discussion on Frances:

DATA FROM AN AIR FORCE PLANE INDICATE THAT THE INNER CORE OR EYEWALL

OF FRANCES HAS DETERIORATED SINCE YESTERDAY AND THE CENTRAL PRESSURE

HAS RISEN TO 959 MB. IN ADDITION…SOME UPPER-LEVEL SOUTHWESTERLY

WINDS ARE CURRENTLY CREATING SOME SHEAR OVER THE HURRICANE

DISRUPTING THE CLOUD PATTERN. THIS MEANS THAT THE HURRICANE HAS

WEAKENED AND THE INITIAL INTENSITY HAS BEEN LOWERED TO 100 KNOTS.

Let’s read between the lines.

Frances is already less than 115 mph and they’re worried it is going to get weaker. On the other hand, they… all of us who forecast weather actually… remember Andrew, and more recently Charley. These are storms that responded rapidly to their outside environments and hit land stronger than anticipated.

I think I mentioned last night that hurricane forecasting is attempted even though we don’t understand all the factors, or even which factors we’re leaving out. Hurricane track forecasting is bad – intensity forecasting is awful.

That’s not an insult to those who do the forecasting. It’s just a fact. And, at the moment, I don’t see any breakthroughs in hurricane forecasting on the horizon.

Here’s where the pact with the Devil comes in.

If Frances hits Florida, and it’s a wimp, then lives are saved. But then no one will listen when the next one comes… and the next one could be Andrew or Charley or the Galveston Hurricane of 1900.

On the other hand, if your forecast verifies and it’s 115 mph coming in, people will be hurt (you hope the warnings have been heeded and no one’s killed), property will be destroyed, lives displaced.

Wishing won’t change things. Still, what do you wish for?

Watching Charley

Tonight, at the end of the news, Ann kidded that I’d be up all night watching Hurricane Charley. That really isn’t far from the truth. I’ve already taken a few peeks.

I’m just in awe of this storm. And Charley is different than most in that it will be very watchable with high resolution precision from the comfort of home.

The Internet has taken nearly all the information I use and made it available to anyone for free. It’s pretty spectacular. I don’t think there’s any other discipline that has so much of its raw data available, and most of it in real time. It wasn’t that many years ago that radar and other data were only available by subscription.

The best view of Charley has been from the Key West NEXRAD. NEXRAD stands for ‘next generation radar,’ but it’s commonly referred to as WSR88D (a reference to its contract designation) – probably because that’s nerdier.

With its incredible electronics and computer assistance, the radar sees precipitation nearly 300 miles out. I was able to look at Charley while he was on the far side of Cuba. Even at that distance the eye was easily seen. By animating a series of images, the counterclockwise rotation was also visible.

Now that Charley is north of Cuba, and back in the open water, I’m looking for signs that he might have weakened over land. At this moment the eye is slightly elongated. It’s not enough to signal disintegration or even significant weakening. Actually, at this point, conditions are perfect for re-intensification.

At the Dry Tortugas weather buoy, in the Florida Keys, the barometer is falling and the wind picking up. It’s only sustained at 20 knots now, but that will rise. The water temperature is about 87&#187.

If you had been clinging to the buoy for the past few hours you would have noticed the sea coming up with more wave action. Strong thunderstorms accompanied by gusty winds would move through sporadically. You would have seen rapidly moving clouds, but it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to realize they were part of a rotating pattern.

As far as I can tell, hurricane hunter aircraft have been flying through the storm tonight, even as it was very close to Cuba.

THE LATEST MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE REPORTED BY AN AIR FORCE RESERVE

HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT IS 973 MB…28.73 INCHES.

STORM SURGE FLOODING OF 10 TO 14 FEET IS PROBABLY BEING EXPERIENCED

ALONG THE SOUTH COAST OF CUBA NEAR AND EAST OF WHERE THE CENTER

MADE LANDFALL. THE SURGE SHOULD GRADUALLY SUBSIDE AS THE HURRICANE

MOVES AWAY FROM CUBA.

STORM SURGE FLOODING OF 2 TO 4 FEET…ALONG WITH LARGE AND DANGEROUS

BATTERING WAVES…CAN BE EXPECTED IN THE FLORIDA KEYS. STORM SURGE

FLOODING OF 10 TO 13 FEET IS ALSO POSSIBLE NEAR AND SOUTH OF THE

WHERE THE CENTER CROSSES THE FLORIDA WEST COAST.

When you consider the elevation of Key West, you realize a 2-4 foot forecast for storm surge is a big deal. The elevation of the airport is only 15 feet above sea level. A lot of the Key West coastline and other keys and islets will be under water.

A storm surge of 10-13 feet in the Tampa Bay area would be a natural disaster of huge proportions. There’s a large population near the coast who have never experienced a storm like this before. Many of the residents are older and evacuation will be difficult. Hurricane experts consider the area from Tampa Bay south to be our second most susceptible area after New Orleans.

Storm surge can be the big killer in hurricanes. In the Hurricane of 1900 all of Galveston was under water for a time!

For locals, any reference to “the storm” is obvious. If someone says a house survived the storm, there is no doubt it predates Sept. 8, 1900.

If people say they had family who died or survived the storm, there is no doubt that they are referring to a family history that goes back more than 100 years.

For in Galveston, “the storm” always refers to the hurricane that tore across Galveston on Sept. 8, 1900, and left the city in ruins.

Those who managed, either by sheer luck or the grace of God, to survive the storm faced the challenge of moving forward. – Heidi Lutz, Galveston County Daily News

I’m waiting for the next run of the GFDL computer model to come out and then I’m off to bed. Even with the heavy iron of computing thrown at these models, we’re already 7 hours 30 minutes past the initialization data, and it’s not available. I’m told there’s so much traffic trying to download the numbers that they’re just dibbling out. I hope the Hurricane Center has a more direct pipe.

Blogger’s note – I have links on the right side of this page which lead to updated hurricane information from the Tropical Prediction Center.