Hurricane Irma

[Beati Dogu]

Thanks for that.

It's not looking good for Cuba or Florida. Irma could rip along the length of them both.

[Gandahar]

Beati Dogu said:

Thanks for that.

It's not looking good for Cuba or Florida. Irma could rip along the length of them both.

Yes, the track now seems to be moving slowly westwards with the last models, originally it was going to be up the east coast of Florida, now sort of central Florida, but it could change still of course.

Harvey wrought havoc on Houston, but as it popped out of nowhere the total energy it generated before landfall was not that great, compare to Irma

http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Realtime/index...

Now that's a vertical graph!

If Irma misses landfall on it's way to Florida it will keep going strong, the sea temps are lower than in the gulf though, so it will weaken slowly, rather than gain strength. However that's what science says, these storms can be surprising.

So if it misses land on the way it will likely be a cat 4 on hitting perhaps south Florida, it will be equally large across. Depending on its eyewall cycle and whether it hits a pocket of warm water it could possibly be a cat 5. Unlikely but it will still be large

I get the feeling it will be worse than Harvey and Donald Trump will have to risk his hair again going down there......

Edited by Gandahar on Friday 8th September 04:22

[jmorgan]

Came across this from a NASAsport twitter feed.

https://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/basicLooper....

Weather experts, how long is a bit of string and all that but I am guessing the northerly stream is the reason it will go north but does it diminish it?

[Scabutz]

outnumbered said:

Beati Dogu said:

I like this site:

https://www.windy.com/?17.811,-66.445,5

Hadn't seen that before - now bookmarked ! Thanks

Feel like I will spend the rest of the day looking at this. Mesmerising

[Beati Dogu]

The worst of hurricane Irma is expected to reach landfall between the Keys and Miami on Sunday morning, with wind speeds picking up late on Saturday night. Mercifully, they believe it will have degraded to a category 2 by then. That still means circa 100 mph winds & 7-10 inches of rain though.

A lot of Floridians are evacuating. Interstate highways like I-75 have been stop-go northbound all the way through neighboring states, with gas stations sold out in many places.

Google Traffic shows the live situation:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/I-75,+United+S...

It's clever how this works. If you didn't know, they get movement data from Android phones & other mobile devices out there to build up a picture of the traffic.

[jmorgan]

Made landfall on Cuba.
https://twitter.com/NASA_SPoRT/status/906361013745...

More from the main feed
https://twitter.com/NASA_SPoRT?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw...

Not sure how to get to the one with the four eye images, the eye diminishing, is that an indication of anything? Weakening?

[Gandahar]

jmorgan said:

Made landfall on Cuba.
https://twitter.com/NASA_SPoRT/status/906361013745...

More from the main feed
https://twitter.com/NASA_SPoRT?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw...

Not sure how to get to the one with the four eye images, the eye diminishing, is that an indication of anything? Weakening?

It goes through eye wall replacements and also it is going partially over land.

Skimming Cuba means it has lost some strength but when it does turn north I expect it to hit cat 4 again. Tracks are now showing travelling up the west coast of florida. Some shift, models a short time back had only one showing that and about 4 showing east coast, which just goes to show the computers and data feed and programmers still need to continue to fine tune.

Irma one of the biggest Atlantic storms ever



As mentioned by the blogger , storm names beginning with I tend to be big.... They hold the top 4 spots.

[Gandahar]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7ld45pUueQ

Got to get your selfies and photo's

Edited by Gandahar on Saturday 9th September 22:21

[Beati Dogu]

Back in 1846 the first recorded category 5 hurricane wrecked Cuba and Florida before continuing up the eastern seaboard all the way up to Canada. Key West (shown above with obligatory utter morons) was hit so hard that even the lighthouse was partially demolished, killing many of the people sheltering inside. The nearby Sand Key Light was toppled over, killing all 6 people inside.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1846_Havana_hurrican...



Here's a handy windspeed guide:

[Gandahar]

Beati Dogu said:

Back in 1846 the first recorded category 5 hurricane wrecked Cuba and Florida before continuing up the eastern seaboard all the way up to Canada. Key West (shown above with obligatory utter morons) was hit so hard that even the lighthouse was partially demolished, killing many of the people sheltering inside. The nearby Sand Key Light was toppled over, killing all 6 people inside.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1846_Havana_hurrican...



Here's a handy windspeed guide:

That made me laugh.

The funny thing about Key west is there is no escape path so strange people decide to brave it out. As the eye has hit full on I bet the bravado has been replaced by tension right about now.

Getting back to the science

6 U.S. landfalling hurricanes w/ pressures < 928 mb (#Irma's current pressure): Indianola, FL Keys, Labor Day, Camille, Andrew & Katrina.

So it is up there with some of the US big well known storms. Now second only to Ivan on total energy measured over it's lifetime. Of course total energy depends on the length of time / track length and whether it misses land. Irma missed most big land masses until it skimmed Cuba which knocked it down a notch. If it had missed Cuba might be a low cat 5 now. Still could be. But likely to be mid cat 4.

Found a good webcam at St Petersburg. Nice high angle and lots of beach with the few palm trees to show them bending over. Clearwater beach

http://www.visitstpeteclearwater.com/webcams

Also seems to have enough bandwidth currently to cope, always a help. Grey and slightly choppy, not bad for a dog walk so far though.

Edited by Gandahar on Sunday 10th September 14:34

[Gandahar]

As a side note, would be interesting to see how the wooden pier does against the palm trees.

As another note, there is a nice strip of blue just in front of the beach, the waves seem to break on what might be a sandbar just further out. Rather an unusual beach if that is the case. Good for toddlers to get splashing without risk of waves. It might be all gone tomorrow.....

[B17NNS]

Gandahar said:

As a side note, would be interesting to see how the wooden pier does against the palm trees.

Wouldn't be the first time Naples lost its pier.

[Beati Dogu]

Gives new meaning to the expression "See Naples and Die".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6eJbe5GyDo


Even the Kennedy Space Center, which was on the other side of Florida lost electricity and water pressure.

[Goldenballs13]

Have relatives that live in St. Petersburg beach, they evacuated to some friends in Orlando. Rumour is floating round that their house has survived however unconfirmed yet.

[Beati Dogu]

Pretty horrible now knowing. You just don't know what you'll find.

I just remembered by second-cousin & his wife live in Miami these days. They moved there from Brazil a couple of years ago to get away from all the crime and violence. Hope they are OK too.

[AshVX220]

Gandahar said:

As a side note, would be interesting to see how the wooden pier does against the palm trees.

As another note, there is a nice strip of blue just in front of the beach, the waves seem to break on what might be a sandbar just further out. Rather an unusual beach if that is the case. Good for toddlers to get splashing without risk of waves. It might be all gone tomorrow.....

Quite a few of the beaches have that feature (Clearwater, Daytona, New Smyrna, Ponce Inlet), very handy for toddlers.

[AshVX220]

My wife and I were in NYC this weekend thankfully (for the tennis, still here due to flight delays etc), and have heard our house is fine, a few bits of damage to neighbors homes and my bosses place on Merritt Island suffered flood damage, so it seems we were very lucky.

[Goldenballs13]

So despite living in St Pete Beach - relative have come out unscathed with the only damage being a branch in the front garden, and the tree leaning over in the rear slightly!

[AshVX220]

Goldenballs13 said:

So despite living in St Pete Beach - relative have come out unscathed with the only damage being a branch in the front garden, and the tree leaning over in the rear slightly!

Glad to hear it, I reckon you were lucky, fortunately it had lost a bit of power on the way north, but still had enough to cause a lot of damage.