Hurricane Irma

[atmsmshr]

Helped a coworker with some minor interior home flooding. They lived on mainland Fort Pierce which got 10 inches of rain in a 4 hour period. A tree had fallen into a canal and impacted a large area.

I cleaned up our lot and took the shutter off the front of the house - the rest stay on until November because of the conga line of storms formed in the Atlantic.

Kahn is right about storm fatigue / depression. you worry like hell about your loved ones safety and your own. Then your property, neighbors and friends and community. Throw in power, ac, water food and gas. (There is nothing like standing in line for MREs or water on a hot day). Be careful about injuries. Cut out and haul yard trash. When you have significant damage, wrestle with insurance and weed out unsavory contractors. Help out others less fortunate and view firsthand the hell they are going through.

 

[48Fire]

We suffered from storm fatigue, but no depression. We were just too lucky and grateful for our own circumstance.

After we took care of our essentials, we volunteered at the local special needs shelter. These people have major challenges even during the best of times.

We also did some cleanup at local state park.

We are going to eat out at local restaurants for a while, and tip 40% to help boost locals.

Other than that, just hoping Maria doesn't come this way. Or at least gives us time to clean up.

 

[audreyh1]

View attachment 26856

Local, from Wednesday.
Good to see.

That's a really freaky picture. I don't see how they could stay on the road!

 

[Amethyst]

I am glad someone mentioned storm stress, and the toll it can take. People in the storm's path have to do everything, all at once, without any assurance that it will be enough.

There wasn't even any bad weather here, and I had some level of storm stress from just watching all the coverage. I'm not kidding - couldn't sleep, distracted, tired. We don't even own property in FL any more, although we were planning to vacation there for this winter. I was worried about relatives in Savannah, also.

 

[Bestwifeever]

We should sue CNN they helped cause the stress then we will take the money and go on a world cruise .

I almost laughed when I heard the news people caution Florida and Texas earlier not to go to sleep during the hurricanes. Oh, thanks for telling them--like you guys could get your eight hours of beauty rest in! I'm sure it will take weeks before you feel fully rested and back to normal. Take care of yourselves!

 

[socca]

I was impressed how the projected eye path predictions for Irma were consistently wrong. The result is to unnecessarily terrify people on the projected path while giving people off the projected path false assurance. The next time around I will pay attention to the spaghetti diagrams but ignore the projected path. Aggregating a bunch of possible paths each with some degree of uncertainty doesn't create a path with any greater certainty, but the talking heads in the media don't treat the aggregated (derived) path that way. The path of the eye is extremely important considering how rapidly wind speeds fall off with increasing distance from the eye.

 

[Khan]

Trash, recycle, and mulch pickup resumes tomorrow.
Didn't sleep well.
Not going to put the boat back into the water until after Maria goes away.

 

[LOL!]

I was impressed how the projected eye path predictions for Irma were consistently wrong.

I was not surprised that the eye path predictions for Irma were consistently correct. I was surprised that folks didn't seem to understand what a cone of probability is, how it changes, how large hurricanes are, how far and what velocities winds occur from the center, how hurricanes create rain, and many other things. Maybe TV weatherpeople dumb it down too much.

The weather reports from the NWS that I saw always had Irma making a 90 degree turn off Cuba and heading north anywhere up the Florida peninsula from about 100 miles offshore to the east or west. That is, the entire Florida peninsula was affected. And that's exactly what happened.

 

[NW-Bound]

Speaking of Maria, the current forecast calls for it to hit Puerto Rico again after Irma. Good grief!

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

600,000 still with no electric, out tr 4.9 million. Thats over a week. Compare this to new york city.

Customers Out of Service:
56
Customers Served:
3,323,537



I bet those 56 are making a huge ruckus right now.

 

[audreyh1]

I was not surprised that the eye path predictions for Irma were consistently correct. I was surprised that folks didn't seem to understand what a cone of probability is, how it changes, how large hurricanes are, how far and what velocities winds occur from the center, how hurricanes create rain, and many other things. Maybe TV weatherpeople dumb it down too much.

The weather reports from the NWS that I saw always had Irma making a 90 degree turn off Cuba and heading north anywhere up the Florida peninsula from about 100 miles offshore to the east or west. That is, the entire Florida peninsula was affected. And that's exactly what happened.

Exactly!

 

[simple girl]

I was impressed how the projected eye path predictions for Irma were consistently wrong. The result is to unnecessarily terrify people on the projected path while giving people off the projected path false assurance. The next time around I will pay attention to the spaghetti diagrams but ignore the projected path. Aggregating a bunch of possible paths each with some degree of uncertainty doesn't create a path with any greater certainty, but the talking heads in the media don't treat the aggregated (derived) path that way. The path of the eye is extremely important considering how rapidly wind speeds fall off with increasing distance from the eye.

Yep, it seemed so likely it was going to east...until it didn't and was headed straight for our area...then it jogged east again and ended up not hitting our area as hard.

With as many trees down and damage that I saw in our area, which I think ultimately only saw CAT 1 winds (I think) - I can only imagine how much damage a 4 or a 5 would do.

 

[meierlde]

Yep, it seemed so likely it was going to east...until it didn't and was headed straight for our area...then it jogged east again and ended up not hitting our area as hard.

With as many trees down and damage that I saw in our area, which I think ultimately only saw CAT 1 winds (I think) - I can only imagine how much damage a 4 or a 5 would do.

Note if you read the forecasts from the National Hurricane center, they include this before the day 4 and 5 positions "
EXTENDED OUTLOOK. NOTE...ERRORS FOR TRACK HAVE AVERAGED NEAR
150 NM ON DAY 4 AND 200 NM ON DAY 5...AND FOR INTENSITY
15 KT EACH DAY"
So for example Miami to Tampa is about 205 mi or 360 kms as the
crow flies. Since the errors are relative to the center of the
track, that implies that all of Florida could be in the cone
in the 4-5 day period. Here is a link to the NHC track error
posting :National Hurricane Center Forecast Verification
So for example 1 day out they say a swath 60 miles wide,
3 days about 100 miles wide etc.

Of course the TV weather types have to dum things down, going
the NHC web site presents the forecast advisory which also
gives wind radius for 35, 50 and if appropriate 65 knot winds.

BTW: i checked and 185 mph is a EF 4 tornado, so imagine an
ef-4 tornado sitting in one place for a number of hours,
no wonder the virgin islands were so destroyed.

 

[socca]

Maybe TV weatherpeople dumb it down too much.

The weather reports from the NWS that I saw always had Irma making a 90 degree turn off Cuba and heading north anywhere up the Florida peninsula from about 100 miles offshore to the east or west. That is, the entire Florida peninsula was affected. And that's exactly what happened.

The National Hurricane Center was fond of publishing diagrams with the projected eye path heading right down the center of the cone of uncertainty. IMO this was misleading. Weather Underground would aggregate the individual model runs in a spaghetti diagram into a projected eye path; also a mistake IMO. The Weather Channel would sometimes just show the projected eye path IIRC.

I never heard a prediction that Irma would stall off the coast of Cuba and lose strength. The old girl never got her mojo back, thank goodness. Irma was forecast to hit the Tampa Bay area directly as a Cat 3; instead she went to the east as a low Cat 1, thank goodness. For those of us directly in the forecasted eye path, these little details matter.

 

[jimnjana]

I never heard a prediction that Irma would stall off the coast of Cuba and lose strength. The old girl never got her mojo back, thank goodness. Irma was forecast to hit the Tampa Bay area directly as a Cat 3; instead she went to the east as a low Cat 1, thank goodness. For those of us directly in the forecasted eye path, these little details matter.

Mikes Weather Page (Spaghetti Models dot com) had it pretty close in his review of the various tracking models. As IRMA started to move away from Cuba you could see in the radar images of the storm that it was beginning to suck in dryer air which contributed to its weakening as rapidly as it did.

 

[NW-Bound]

... For those of us directly in the forecasted eye path, these little details matter.

I have never lived in a hurricane area, but can certainly imagine how important the forecast is for people who are affected.

Unfortunately, there's so much randomness in nature that science simply cannot predict down to the level we want to see. Even taking things down to the atom and electron level, we still cannot predict exactly what one is going to do (Heisenberg's principle).

I am impressed that they could even tell the general direction that the hurricane would go. What did people do to dodge hurricanes 100 years ago? 50 years ago?

 

[LOL!]

I never heard a prediction that Irma would stall off the coast of Cuba and lose strength. The old girl never got her mojo back, thank goodness. Irma was forecast to hit the Tampa Bay area directly as a Cat 3; instead she went to the east as a low Cat 1, thank goodness. For those of us directly in the forecasted eye path, these little details matter.

I never heard that either, but the possibility was mentioned in the textual discussions issued by NWS /NHC. Irma was also forecast to go other places, but just like the one you noted never with 100% probability nor certainty.

 

[Sunset]

.... What did people do to dodge hurricanes 100 years ago? 50 years ago?

A 100 years ago, nothing. It was probably a big suprise.

A famous one is the 1900 Galveston Texas Hurricane

"The hurricane that destroyed Galveston on September 8, 1900, is the nations's deadliest natural disaster. Although its death toll will never be known precisely, the 1900 Storm claimed upwards of 8,000 lives on Galveston Island and several thousand more on the mainland."

1900 Storm

It's a good thing we now have radar.
http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/Galveston Texas Hurricane 1900

 

[Texas Proud]

The National Hurricane Center was fond of publishing diagrams with the projected eye path heading right down the center of the cone of uncertainty. IMO this was misleading. Weather Underground would aggregate the individual model runs in a spaghetti diagram into a projected eye path; also a mistake IMO. The Weather Channel would sometimes just show the projected eye path IIRC.

I never heard a prediction that Irma would stall off the coast of Cuba and lose strength. The old girl never got her mojo back, thank goodness. Irma was forecast to hit the Tampa Bay area directly as a Cat 3; instead she went to the east as a low Cat 1, thank goodness. For those of us directly in the forecasted eye path, these little details matter.

Not to sound too negative on you, but anybody who thinks that the weathermen can predict where a hurricane is going with any kind of accuracy is foolish... the ones around here always stress that the prediction is an avg of the forecasts and that there are probabilities that you need to take into consideration... IMO they were pretty close to getting it right... I always heard that it could be either side of Florida...

I remember that they even said there was a model what had it continuing to go straight into the Gulf a distance before turning... it was an outlier, but was shown when they showed the various lines...


BTW, the east coast of Florida was still getting hurricane force winds even though the eye was on the west coast... so being prepared was not a bad idea...

 

[NW-Bound]

... It's a good thing we now have radar...

Radars and satellite imaging tell us where the hurricane is now, but they have some models of the weather to forecast where it is heading next.

The hurricane path prediction is not perfect, but if I could have an equivalent forecast of the short-term market movement, I would be very rich.

Actually, all I need to know is, just 3 or 4 days from now, whether the US stock market beats the foreign market or the other way around, I can make lots of money. They both can drop, but if I knew which one is better, meaning droppimg less, I could still make money.

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

Over a quarter of a million still with no power.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

I though the Euro Model was pretty darn close.

 

[Meadbh]

Maria is now said to be a Category 5 hurricane, 15 miles from Dominica. I've been to Dominica. It's poor. They need this like a hole in the head.

 

[W2R]

Maria is now said to be a Category 5 hurricane, 15 miles from Dominica. I've been to Dominica. It's poor. They need this like a hole in the head.

Oh no, how tragic! I had no idea.

 

[Meadbh]

Maria has visited her wrath on Dominica and is now en route to Puerto Rico.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/l...tegory-five-storm-live?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other