Hurricane Irma

[Gandahar]

It's a big boy

https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/extremely-danger...

They were thinking the pressure levels will not get that low, but they did. Well off Wilma though. Looks like they might have Jose following the same path as well which would be very unfortunate for the same islands just clearing up. As a point of note this will only be an important storm once it starts hitting the USA

With this


Figure 2. Inside the eye of Irma on NOAA’s hurricane hunter aircraft September 5, 2017, when Irma was upgraded to a Category 5 storm. This is referred to as the "stadium effect". Image credit: CDR Kibbey/NOAA.

as someone who worries about whether my gin and tonic might be spilled during the flight back from Luxembourg I do take my hat off to them.

Edited by Gandahar on Wednesday 6th September 14:37

[Gandahar]

Beati Dogu said:

It's good isn't it?

You can clearly see Irma, Jose and Katia, which is the one rolling around the Gulf of Mexico.

Certainly is, thanks. Wunderground do a nice montage as well that can watched with that to get an idea if you look at both

https://www.wunderground.com/wundermap?lat=20.7&am...

you might need to zoom out, shows the tracks and strengths at certain times.

Oops originally wrong link.

Edited by Gandahar on Thursday 7th September 20:24

[Gandahar]

Beati Dogu said:

Those Roaring Forties are well named.

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

Stronger winds actually happen on the actual land in Antarctica, though that is not downplaying the southern ocean depressions.

Cold dense air flows from the interior at higher elevation down to the coast. This causes katabatic winds.

A very good summary http://www.anta.canterbury.ac.nz/documents/GCAS_7/...

They average less than a Cat 5 cyclone but can last for days, -

From February 1912 to December 1913, scientists measured the wind speed at Cape Denison, a rocky point at the head of Commonwealth Bay in east Antarctica. To this day it is recognised as the windiest sea level station on Earth.
The windiest hour was recorded on 6 July 1913 at 95mph (153km/h). On the widely-used Beaufort scale of wind speeds, Cape Denison's annual average wind speed is gale force.

According to Sir Douglas Mawson, who led the expedition to Cape Denison, "the climate proved little more than one continuous blizzard the year round; a hurricane of wind roaring for weeks together, pausing for breath only at odd hours."

The combination of ultra-strong winds and sub-zero temperatures means it is actually rather hard to measure the strength of katabatic winds.
For one thing, when the winds are really up they can destroy the measuring instruments and the masts they are attached to. But even when the gusts are gentler, propeller- or cup-style anemometers can ice up in the cold. It is possible to use ultrasonic anemometers, which don't have any moving parts and can be heated to avoid icing problems," says King. "But these don't work well at high wind speeds when there is a lot of blowing snow in the air." All in all, Antarctica is a challenging place to measure wind."

And at least you can do some sunbathing on Necker Island when it has passed

[Gandahar]

Two twitter posts to watch

https://twitter.com/philklotzbach
https://twitter.com/EricBlake12

They know each other and so cross tweet. They will give you all you need to know in the coming week if you are interested in this sort of stuff. One is removed from there, Colorado and one is working is the storm at the Hurricane centre, so more personal even though he is a scientist( he has borded up his house already). Will be good to see how they report it between them if it does hit Florida head on.

Could be a good social experiment for psychologists. Book mark them both,

Of course if it does not whack Florida / Miami then my experiment goes awol immediately.

Edited by Gandahar on Thursday 7th September 23:23

[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

[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

[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.....