Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands | Hacker News Reader

Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

npr.org

197 pointsjameslk151 comments

Having just lived through Harvey, I cannot stress enough that if you are in a position to evacuate, please do so. We were lucky to narrowly escape flooding in our home, but for 3 days we had no water, septic or power(need power for the other 2). The flooding had us stuck in our neighborhood but we were able to kayak out to safety. In addition to high winds(which Houston fortunately avoided) flooding is very dangerous. Those in the path of Irma should expect both. Again please evacuate if you can.

I wonder how flat is the houston area. West indies are often volcanic islands. Meaning the high ground will probably be "safe" from flood, the lower parts on the other hands.. Somehow they're a bit used to storms so they're not going full noob on this.

Houston is some of the flattest land you'll find in the states, but at least we're not quite below sea level.

I'm from Austin, and have lived in Tokyo, and I used to joke while in Tokyo you'd go stir-crazy missing trees and greenery, despite the large parks there; in Houston you go crazy missing hills and topography if you're used to it.

Heh, I remember coming back from Martinique, I landed in Paris, and while we were driving I was a bit lost, there were no up and downs anymore; everything was sooo flat.

You're thinking of Cuba, who are certainly not noobs at this [1]. West Indies unfortunately are routinely decimated by tropical storms. For instance Hugo in 1989 destroyed almost everything in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, leading to widespread lawlessness until President Bush deployed troops there [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba_Emergency_Response_System

[2] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/hawkeye.htm

Store owners guarding their stores from the roof w/ AK-47s will do that.

>You're thinking of Cuba, who are certainly not noobs at this. West Indies unfortunately are routinely decimated by tropical storms.

This isn't really true anymore. For example, 95% of homes on St. Martin were destroyed by Hurricane Luis in 1995, because everyone lived in wooden houses. From that point on, the law mandated concrete buildings, and now all but the very poorest people live in houses impervious to hurricanes.

The exceptions are places like Haiti, where folks are simply too poor to afford basic hurricane mitigation. But where people can prepare, they have prepared.

Yeah, I saw the British Virgin Islands evacuated Anegada (which is a flat coral atoll), sending people to Tortola and Virgin Gorda (both quite hilly).

http://www.bviddm.com/emergency-arrangements-for-anegada/

cannot be too flat, have family friends who were high and dry but they didn't have far to go to find flood waters. Interestingly enough Houston didn't suffer flooding problems due to bad zoning, it has more absorbent surface coverage than most cities including some in similar positions relative to the sea.

Suffering a stalled storm is not what you can really plan for. the water simply had no where to go.

I was in Hugo in 1989 where I had no power for over a week (and was lucky). I totally agree. Residents in the Southeast should start preparing today while supplies are still in the stores. Board up your windows. Bring in outside lawn furniture and decorations so they don't become missiles. Go visit relatives or friends. If you can't leave (and you really should..) have water and shelf-stable food for a week (NOT bread, milk and steaks). Get your prescriptions refilled. Scan your insurance policy if you don't already have a PDF. Make a video with timestamp of your house and all your possessions.

The suggestions at https://www.ready.gov should be considered a starting point, as they assume that relief will arrive sooner than recent storms have proven.

EDIT: Get your off-site backup started so you'll have time to Fed-Ex it out of town. If you have a business, make sure your employees will be fine, then start your continuity plans. Which should include some cash to pay bills in case the power goes out (no ATMs, no card machines).

I still have a radar photo of Hugo somewhere. That storm was crazy.

The naval base in Charleston had a barge on which they had built hotel rooms for people to live in while working on various projects. After Hugo went through, it was found 1.5 miles (2.4 km) inland. Not sure if they ever got it back in the water, or they just cut it up where it was found.

What do you think of city mayor's decision not to order a larger scale evacuation. NYT seems to think it was absolutely (their word) the right thing to do. Being on the ground there, would you agree?

How do you evacuate 4 million people in a few days? Wouldn't they all clog up the roads and consume all the gasoline?

At first I thought he didn't make the right decision then history shows that a few weeks after Katrina another storm prompted an evacuation. Many more died then evacuating.

How about just evacuating the most vulnerable?

Some kind of classification system where people and/or households could be grouped together by urgency or sensitivity to calamities (e.g. diabetic, disabled, elderly) would make this process a lot more straightforward. If you're in group X you go at time Y, etc.

Not that this would ever fly in Texas where if the government tells you to do something it's just them interfering in your life.

Cuba has this down to a science. America has no clue what it's doing. The contrast is astounding.

Hn: privacy is the most important thing, the government is making lists and out to get you.

Also Hn: let's make a detailed enough list of the exact medical condition of every household in the country that we can evacuate everyone more than X vulnerable in a few days.

Unrelated: you're aware Cuba has roughly the population of NYC, right?

HN is an odd mix of politics, that's for sure.

Cuba has a fairly large population and very limited resources which makes their system all the more impressive. Their system is worth studying, as if Cuba of all countries can do it, surely the US can: http://www.globalresearch.ca/a-lesson-for-the-us-cubas-respo...

> Cuba’s intersectoral preparedness and response to hurricanes, which include education, drilling and how the country’s relatively small civil defense force is deployed at provincial, municipal and local community levels when a storm is first detected.

The US response seems to be ignoring the experts, blaming the victims, and trying to profit from the resulting mess.

Though of course "can" in a technical sense and "can" in a political sense are worlds apart.

If you publicize that, tons of other people evacuate, and the interstate system quickly becomes gridlocked. It's counter-intuitive, but every study and disaster plan for Houston has consistently called for shelter-in-place over calls for evacuation from an official source.

Evacuation does not have to mean leaving the city either. Evacuating the most vulnerable to a safe area is more like a peak hour traffic problem.

The few historical evacuations of >1mil people have often been over the course of 7+days, as well as over very large areas.

The only _successful_ evacuation of a major metropolitan area (>3mil) in <1month was the khymer rogue. But as they were using brutal violence and took >20k causalities so it is hard to call that successful.

I beg to differ. Exodus of ~1m people in about one day is frequently observed in Europe. It can't be done with cars, of course, because cars are not a means of mass transportation. It can be done easily with trains, though.

Example: Street Parade Zurich, attended by about a million people. Virtually all of those people arrive by train immediately before the event, and are gone the next day. Watching > 100k people pour out of a train station in less than an hour is really a spectacle. Remember that Zurich is not a huge city in the first place.

Example: Paris goes on holiday. All-but-literally everybody leaves Paris for summer holiday, pretty much simultaneously. You don't know what an urban evacuation means until you've witnessed this.

Moving a million people across town is different from getting them out of the path of a hurricane. Hurricanes are bigger than cities.

Those 1 million people in Europe are going to their home.

I bet not even Europe or China can figure out how to suddenly house/feed a million people who had to evacuate from a city for a few days, or even overnight.

Okay this is idiotic.

Evacuation are very different from attending work, or attending a festival. Namely... You plan to return to your home/apartment/etc. and your belongs will still be present. There isn't the threat of death.

Furthermore Evacuations require moving people who often _don't_ have the ability to travel on their own. Rather by choice, or socio-economic pressures i.e.: poverty, or limited parking in city centers. Therefore attendance to work/events for these people is normally just walking a handful of blocks, or using public transit which become limited when dealing with evacuations.

The last time an evacuation was called for in Houston (Rita), over 100 people died trying to evacuate before the hurricane even hit. (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Rita#Evacuation_deat...)

In terms of life lost, evacuating would have been a disaster. You'd have had gridlocked interstates underwater.

Mayor Turner absolutely made the right call by not evacuating. Living in Houston, I'm probably a bit biased, but I find the criticism he's received for making the decision not to evacuate a bit absurd.

Agreed. I live in Austin now, but I lived in Houston before this (Ike hit about a week after I moved to H-town, what a welcome party). Turner made absolutely the right decision. It was very unclear until very close to landfall how powerful it was going to really be (tropical storm -> Cat 4 in ~50 hours.) That isn't enough time. For ~4 million people, like a week isn't enough time...

If a panic had ensued from an evac order? Honestly, I believe thousands would have died from the roads flooding and being trapped in their cars. It would have been a living nightmare, more than it already was.

(Greg Abbott, on the other hand, did recommend evacuation. I can only assume he did this because his only purpose for existence is to be a gigantic piece of shit, and ruin people's lives in any way he can, but whatever.)

Not in Houston, but have a fair amount of experience in emergency management.

The mayor of Houston picked the best of a number of bad options. Evacuating would have almost certainly resulted in several times the number of casualties. Harvey intensified very quickly, and by the time the threat was clear, it was too late to cut and run. You would have had freeways turned into parking lots, which would then be under 10' of water.

I am not from Houston, but what I read online was that the major highways are designed to serve as overflow drainage for the water. This is part of why in some places they were submerged nearly to the depth of the over-highway road signs. Thus in Houston in particular, they are the most dangerous place to be in a flood. Previous experience suggested it was highly likely people would get stuck on the highways in an evacuation.

Evacuating is very difficult and dangerous.

This is a great read as to why:

https://np.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/6wcpt0/la_vita_bella_n...

Not if you're in Florida and leave today. Plenty of time to get out of harm's way. Florida orders evacuations routinely for hurricanes.

To add - evacuation doesn't have to mean go hundreds of miles... I lived in FL for 7+ years, if I was really worried, I'd just travel more inland. Typically hurricanes of any strength rapidly degrade as soon as you cut the legs from underneath them, meaning, they travel over land.. I'd say about 50 miles inland, you'd get a badass storm, but not hurricane strength winds...

The governor has suspended all tolls in Florida as well to alleviate traffic onto toll roads and turnpikes and off interstate highways.

Floridians, especially those who lived through Charlie, are usually very well-versed in hurricane preparedness. Especially if, like me, they are unable to evacuate. (If I were to even attempt it, it would likely leave me stranded on the road for days and risk being a sitting duck.)

That being said, I fully expect it to make landfall near where I live at category 5 strength, despite the current projections of "merely" a category 4 when it reaches us.

Honest question: You'd be stranded if you left now?

The problem isn't just the hurricane, it's surviving the aftermath.

Let's look at the scenarios for evacuating the state.

If I leave now (without any vehicle to my name), I'd need to arrange for a car rental. Assuming any vehicles are even available to be driven out of the state, and they'd rent one to someone who is half-blind and doesn't have a driver's license, by the time I got into one, I'd be looking at several days of traffic jams and statewide gas shortages. The odds of being stuck on the road when the hurricane hits is too significant to ignore, and I'd rather be in a house than a car.

Then I would need a place to go. AirBNB, hotels, etc. are all expensive as hell, and probably saturated with evacuees.

Finally, I need to do all that while taking more time off of work than I am allowed to take every year, which calls two things into question:

  1. How will I pay for the evacuation and stay?
  2. Will I even have a job after all this? (I work remote.)

This isn't even considering the fact that I need to make a decision with 5 other adults (the people I live with, and care about the most, all of whom have decided to prepare and weather the storm).

Evacuation sounds good in theory, but honestly, it's not so simple.

In the off-chance that the storm kills me: Pragmatically speaking, I'm basically a nobody who has done practically nothing noteworthy, so no one outside my immediate circle of friends will care (if they even know). I encourage everyone in the path of the storm, all of whom probably matter to the community much more than I ever will, to make their own decisions and not follow my example.

> I'm basically a nobody who has done practically nothing noteworthy

You've done at least one noteworthy thing: you posted the above comment. I, for one, noticed.

Good luck to you.

This is one of the major downsides of living in a dense city without your own car and relying on the "transportation as a service" model. It works fine until it doesn't, and then you're screwed. The system is fragile with very little resiliency. (This is just a general comment, I don't mean it as a criticism of your personal choices.)

For what it's worth, I hope you make it through with life, limb and property unscathed.

Greetings fellow nobody :)

You'll be in my thoughts and prayers this week. Stay safe

Serious question: why don't you fly out? I just checked on Google Flights and there are seats out of Miami today for <$200. Even adding ground transportation on each end it seems to me you could get out of Dodge for <1k including temporary housing at the end. You're a software engineer, surely you can afford that?

[UPDATE:] Just saw this:

http://www.businessinsider.com/hurricane-irma-evacuation-jet...

It's a four hour drive to Miami from here.

Ah. Where is "here"? Miami is not the only major airport in Florida. Orlando->Atlanta and Tampa->JFK are both available for $114.

Northwest Cape Coral.

Ah. I see the problem. Good luck. Please let us know how you fare.

Looks like your area is now in a "mandatory" evacuation zone. Are you still staying put?

Yes, I stayed put. I'm also okay/alive/etc.

Glad to hear it. When you're fully recovered let's chat about security some time.

upvoted for the info. Not the nobody part. Good luck to you

I know that this is slightly off-topic so feel free to downvote if you feel so inclined:

There's a lot of money that goes into disaster relief and recovery. I think that's great and very worthwhile, thoughts on charity accountability notwithstanding.

What I wonder, though, is if there are any organizations that provide pre-relief (prelief?) for disasters. For instance, the comment in this discussion about the airlines overbooking for flights out of the Turks made me think, "we've known that this is a possibility for a while, could aid funds be provided to get folks to safety in advance?" I know that there are a lot of logistical problems to solve (where do they go? for how long will they stay? what about their lives/livelihoods at home? how does an organization maintain accountability with donations for a disaster that has yet to happen?)

Anyway, it's just a thought. I didn't know if such an organization existed, or if it's even feasible.

Yes, but the most common form is infrastructure. Schools for example are often over engineered so they can be used as evacuation shelters.

Abstractly, the Red cross for examples also promotes disaster preparedness. http://www.redcross.org/get-help/how-to-prepare-for-emergenc...

Simple notification is another, huge but often overlooked step. More immediate things like providing busing to evacuate people is often considered part of the event.

I think the general trick is there are always enough people in the world in need of charity to make pre-funding private disaster relief seem like wasted potential.

This is supposed to be something governments account for. They budget for and provide the insurance on giant disasters of this scale.

If we want to do anything about improving the preparation and recovery from natural disasters, it will have to be a political engagement. The total costs of some of these incidents push tens of billions of dollars for the whole recovery. If there is anything governments should be accountable for, it is acts of nature.

It isn't feasible, but the reasons are weather prediction, not economics. Those who live in hurricane reasons are warned far enough in advance to evacuate 10 times every year. Many years not even one hurricane turns out big enough that an evacuation was required, and even when one does turn out that big, that vast majority of the land that was warned is never affected.

When we can accurately predict 1 week in advance how big and where a hurricane will land it is easy to evacuate those people over that week. However we don't yet have enough information to do that.

People living in those areas soon learn that most hurricanes are non-events: either they hit elsewhere, or they are small enough that their house can safely ride it out. Either way they can go years without evacuating. When a big one finally comes for them they don't realize until it is too late. Then the evacuation becomes a massive traffic jam of people trying to get out in not enough time.

Note that even if weather prediction is good enough people will take years to undo their habit of ignoring the predictions until it is too late as they have learned that the warnings are not worth paying attention to. (For all I know prediction might already be good enough)

I live in South Florida and this nails it. My friends who have lived here a short time are already planning to pack up and leave. My friends who have been here for 10+ years are all just going to stay and ride it out. I think even if they issued mandatory evacuations many of them would still not leave. They all speak longingly of having neighborhood "hurricane parties" while they wait for the power to come back on. They think of it as South Florida snow days. An inconvenience at worst, a fun few days off school and work at best. They just don't see the threat as being that serious.

Florida native here. They must not remember Andrew. It was not fun and games.

The media plays these storms up, yes, but they really are nothing to joke about. Even inland, as much rain as they produce, it only takes that one gust to push over a 200 year old oak and it can destroy a house.

People should take these storms seriously. First responders' lives are put into jeopardy because of foolishness like that.

Not trying to be all up on my soapbox here. I've just seen some stuff is all.

The overemphasis on coastal areas is a real problem, actually. I have known people that evacuated away from the storm, only to get kicked out of the hotel as it started to flood (~100 miles inland).

The whole, "everything on the coast is about to be destroyed" trope that gets blasted all over the nation doesn't help with proper risk assessment and planning.

Florida native here, too. What op is probably referring to are those who haven't been decimated yet. I've lived in Ft.lauderdale a for a while and went through Andrew. We evacuated inland. The place we evacuated to lost power, where our house didn't. Ironic, isn't it.

Ft.lauderdale wasn't near the eye. It was Miami/Homestead. Anyone who has lived in Ft.lauderdale has probably not faced a damaging hurricane. Andrew was 25 years ago. I do not recall any hurricane after that that caused as much alarm. Just a few days off school.

^ This I live in Ft. Lauderdale and most of my friends live in Broward. In our age group even if they lived here for Andrew they probably don't remember it. I would have been 6 when it happened.

We haven't had a major hurricane make landfall in FL in 12 years. People begin to forget the fear and seriousness in that time.

I grew up in Orlando and my high school gym was a shelter for those displaced by Andrew. That stretches back quite a bit farther than 12 years, I know, but the image of folks living in the gym has been seared into my brain. It's part of the reason why I asked the original question.

Yeah, the problem is I live in Ft. Lauderdale, so there hasn't been a truly devastating storm during the lifetime of most of the people I know. Most of my friends are around my age and I would have been 6 when Andrew came through, so even if they lived in Miami-Dade where the worst effects were they probably don't remember it.

   >They just don't see the threat as being that serious.

Which is fine, until it isn't. One problem with having survived a few hurricanes is that they aren't "that bad" until you hit one that was. I've seen bad enough that I'd never want to see a stronger one. Even without any additional risk, a week without power or fresh water in a hundred degrees isn't anyone idea of fun.

If the climate models are right on this, we're going to see increased frequency of exceptionally violent ones, and many more people are going to die "riding it out". I don't know if knowing that it really changes anything though. In a lot of these bigger metro areas, full evacuation isn't really practical either.

To be fair, most people just don't respond as rapidly to anything they are used to. It's the same reason why New Yorkers are not bothered by fire trucks at all and/or fire alarms.

To quote you, "Which is fine, until it isn't". Looking from the outside in, it's easy to question their logic, but i am sure we all have traits that outsiders would wonder why we are so nonchalant about it. It's adaptation, it's human conditioning, it's nature.

I wonder how many of those in this thread wondering "why don't they evacuate?" live in California's earthquake zone.

The keys are having a mandatory evacuation because of Irma.

Consider also that the strong political incentive is to order evacuations at every opportunity. If the storm fizzles out or veers off-course, the politician can say "Better safe than sorry" and be no worse for the wear. If the storm turns out worse than expected, however, and the politician did not order an evacuation, he will be eviscerated no matter what.

This means it is always politically expedient to "cry wolf" over anything with any potential significance, which only makes _meaningful_ evacuation orders less heeded.

At this point, we're 5 days out from the storm hitting the continental US, and they still don't really know whether it will hit Florida or not; it could still veer into either the Atlantic or the Gulf.

Where I live in Central FL, people are already hoarding gasoline, food, and water, and it may turn into Mad Max before the storm even hits. Heeding warnings is great but per usual, it seems to be one extreme or the other...

FiveThirtyEight had an interesting piece on how politicians have stronger incentives to provide relief after disasters than prepare for them before hand.

You can read it at https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/disaster-politics-can-g... .

>There's a lot of money that goes into disaster relief and recovery. I think that's great and very worthwhile, thoughts on charity accountability notwithstanding.

>What I wonder, though, is if there are any organizations that provide pre-relief (prelief?) for disasters.

Future Aid: Why Prevention Efforts in Humanitarian Aid Often Fail

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZwFG63TNxQ

http://aid.works/2016/10/billions-spent-why-isnt-haiti-ready...

>Humanitarian response is reactive, in part, because funding is reactive. Giving is emotional and irrational. If people can’t see the problem, it isn’t likely to garner support.

>Disaster preparedness is too abstract for people to take out their wallets. Even when someone says, “Hey, if you give $5 now, you’ll save more lives and money in the long run…” people just aren’t inclined to do it. Consider the slogan, “Build Back Better.” The emphasis is on what is already broken. A more pragmatic slogan would be, “Build Better.” It’s not likely to catch on.

Wow! Thanks for this. I think it directly confronts many of the thoughts that I'd been entertaining.

Not necessary pre-relief, but some companies assess risk of a damage prior to the disaster.

E.g. at tensorflight we are assessing building insurance risk via computer vision and significant part of features we detect are useful for hurricanes (e.g. building construction type, potential windborne projectiles, trees dangerously close to the building). Although our business model is selling this data for insurance, we could offer an assessment to individual users close to the catastrophe. Do you think individual users would be interested in potential suggestions (e.g. trim the tree, move chairs in-house, or flee ASAP :P)

This site makes an appearance on HN somewhat regularly, but in case it's new to anyone, it tends to be a pretty useful forecast visual for wind: https://www.windy.com/?25.820,-67.720,5

It's also interesting to look at the bigger picture. The southern hemisphere has its own level of insanity going on:

https://www.windy.com/?-22.513,39.375,3

I think that's somewhat normal below 40 degrees south. Lots of open ocean without any significant land masses to slow things down. See more here:

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

lest we forget the Furious Fifties

Is that normal?

Yes. There's no land around 40-50°S, so you basically get in effect a permanent storm over ocean with nothing to break the wind. It's why the weather in Antarctica is so much severer than that in the Arctic.

This is one of the reasons why building the Panama Canal was so important. Having to go through the Drake Passage was not only a long distance it was very dangerous due to the persistent extreme weather:

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Drake_Passage

Searching youtube videos for "Drake passage" is also very interesting to see how strong the waves are when travelling via boat through the passage.

it's only showing about 60 knots (70MPH). is the model off? does the model show higher altitudes? are the news exaggerating?

I'm wondering if it's a limitation of Windy. Their scale only goes up yo 70mph no matter where you are on the map, so I'm guessing that's as high as they can show.

I noticed that too when looking at hurricane Harvey. I use windy.com for sailing, and for low windspeeds, I can say that in my experience it has been pretty accurate.

For any given area you click, I think if you click on the details link you'll see a forecast that shows the gusts. I figure, new broadcasts will use the highest record windspeed for their headline (commercial news outlets being what they are). And you can see gusts that are far higher than nominal when you click on the detailed forecast. I see one area that is nominally 62 knots and gusting to 109 knots (125 mph).

The news generally reports the maximum sustained winds as such, in addition to the maximum gusts. Naturally, the maximum sustained wind speed is not the same throughout the storm - it's mostly in the eyewall. The category rating is based on the max sustained wind speed.

ventusky.com also has all the rest of the metrics as well.

Wow this site is fantastic. Thanks for relinking. I'm thankfully well out of the path of most extreme weather situations (one of the benefits to the north), but my heart's with everybody affected. It must be otherworldly.

This one is also pretty nice: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2017/09/09/1200Z/wind/surface/...

Especially there are many options to play around with (projections, etc)

I found that this one and windy.com give me bad information; something about the plugins I use and/or browser settings I suspect. With windy.com I saw Harvey crashing into Mexico and with earth.nullschool.net I just saw Irma almost directly south of Florida. Since it sounds like windy.com is based on the earth.nullschool.net code, I suspect it is the same issue in both. It seems like sometimes the map and wind layers get out of sync after moving the view area.

https://www.ventusky.com seems to work for me so far.

windy, ventusky and some of the others do NOT get wind speeds correctly. At no time during the last three days did they even have winds for Hurricane Irma over 80mph.

Discussion on their forums[0], most upset that these 'visualizers' are more fiction than fact. Also worth noting... getting wind speeds wrong can cost lives.

[0] https://community.windy.com/topic/4415/why-is-wind-speed-in-...

I was 10 living in Miami during Hurricane Andrew, and I'm still here if that's were Irma hits.

After Andrew we bought an RV and live in that outside our house for months while our home was repaired/rebuilt; I can't recall exactly but I'd say it was at least a month before power was restored to power refridge/deep freezer; for months my elementary school was shared with another school that was destroyed (we had half days); houses literally had "looters will be shot" spray painted on them; eventually national guard began patrolling the neighborhood for a couple months; it wasn't unusual for kids at school to be living off military MREs (meals ready to eat). And we always considered ourselves lucky.

Oof. This is ramping up to be quite the hurricane/monsoon season.

I don't know much about meteorology, so I'll post this without comment besides the article's subject; maybe someone else can make an informed value judgement. But apparently as global temperatures rise, the atmosphere is going to be able to hold a lot more water:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/the-stra...

The atmosphere can hold more water, and the oceans hold more heat. Hurricanes thrive on warm water (especially deep warm water, as the hurricane will churn up water from deeper levels, which can weaken it significantly if it's stirring up a lot of cold water).

One of the reasons Harvey intensified so quickly is that is passed over a _very_ warm section of the gulf:

https://s.w-x.co/wu/ohc_aQG3_2016_237_1200.harvey.int__0.gif

Irma will be passing over similarly warm waters for the next 4-5 days:

http://isotherm.rsmas.miami.edu/heat/images/irma/ohc_aQG3_20...

The northern Leewards and Greater Antilles are in for a _really_ rough time. It's likely a direct hit (or close brush) with either Hispaniola or Cuba will weaken Irma before it turns north into Florida, but that's still really bad news for folks in the northern Caribbean, and it's still going to be a very serious storm when it hits Florida.

Cliff Mass (whose blog is really worth following) points out that this is not an abnormal hurricane season by historical standards. There is not a big temperature anomaly in the waters fueling these storms: http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2017/08/global-warming-and-hur...

In other words, this is the kind of storm season you can expect to get once in a while even before factoring in the effect of warming seas.

Please note that the Cliff Mass blog post you linked to is not about the hurricane discussed here. Also note that your summary of his post ("this is not an abnormal hurricane season by historical standards") is misleading as that is not the topic or conclusion of that piece.

Look at the weekly SST temperature anomaly along Irma's track and you'll see the argument carries over.

Indeed. It is more or less impossible to say "this storm happened because of climate change". What climate change does is shift the storms/year bell curve slightly to the right.

It's not a bell curve, though.

No? A (very) quick and dirty plot looks like a pretty normal distribution to me...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fs9fqjsq6vau5bt/Screenshot%202017-...

Note that nine-sigma (or whatever it is) event on the right.

Been watching this for a few days with /r/tropicalweather. Amazing to watch.

This site[1] has some really good info and daily videos with the rundown of the latest forecast

[1] https://www.tropicaltidbits.com

I really like the amount of info spaghettimodels.com gathers into one place.

It's also pretty fascinating to look at the Satellite images. Here you can check out the latest from the hi-res GOES-16. It's insane to see the scale of the hurricane, all told.

http://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu/

They have a nice loop of Irma's eye.

2017/09/05 - A closeup look at Hurricane Irma's eye via 1-min Band 2

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/loop_of_the_d...

mp4 link: http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/images/loop_o...

As a Puerto Rican preparing for Irma, yes, we're pretty freaked.

Stay safe and I hope all goes well with minimal damage.

Thank you!

chances are you will just be saved : https://earth.nullschool.net/#2017/09/07/0000Z/wind/isobaric...

This is shockingly bad "advice".

A Category 5 hurricane is not a point source, and storm prediction is far from an exact science.

It was expected to go north today. Unfortunately, all models were wrong and it actually is coming much faster to our direction, and it keeps getting stronger. I'm legitimately scared.

We all are.

I’m in Guaynabo. Not close to the coast, so I didn’t have to evacuate.

Came down for the weekend, stayed because of the hurricane...

Be safe!

heart goes out to viaques, which looks like it'll take a worse hit then the main island

For sure. Vieques and Culebra are going to have a seriously difficult time.

I have been through a category 3 hurricane(Ivan) in the Caribbean and it devastated the island, cost us over a billion in damages and took about 10 years to recover. Its not something I want to go through again. A category 5 at those wind speeds, even block structures with hip and gable roofing and short eaves can be torn off and have walls fall. I hope you and everyone in this hurricane's path safety.

Woah. Thanks for the wishes.

Hey Im also a local. pryelluw@gmail.com if anything!

Hurricanes rotate counter clockwise, so the highest wind speeds and storm surge tend to occur to the "right" or on the east/southeast side of the eye path. Currently Miami looks to be right in the center of this danger zone, so just get out now while you still can.

Yes it's a few days out and they can and usually do veer off, but this one is not worth riding out.

a hard steer to the right would be nice... but many of them do a slow steer and would get me right in it... http://www.stuartflelectrician.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/1...

some spaghetti models predict a pretty hard right steer, but a little too late.... http://derecho.math.uwm.edu/models/al112017.png

Hasn't Miami been sinking a bit over the past few decades? I would imagine it wouldn't take much storm surge to flood parts of the city. In that case, they really don't wanna be on that side of the storm.

I remember reading a few days ago that European models were predicting a turn to the north, and US models were predicting a high pressure ridge holding the hurricane to the west.

Anyone know more about this?

Because if true, it's the second time European models were more correct than American ones. Last time they decided we needed more supercomputing power, and they got it. Did it help?

The models are converging on a northward turn right around the southern tip of Florida. We're still too far out to be talking about which one was 'right' or 'wrong' (it's common for there to be a lot of variability in the 5+ day forecasts).

> Last time they decided we needed more supercomputing power, and they got it. Did it help?

Per a few sources I've seen, no, it didn't. One big cause of the GFS (USA) model's inaccuracy is lack the of computing power, which we've addressed a few times with new supercomputing clusters.

The bigger problem is that the GFS model uses bad underlying physics. Decades ago we made several choices to optimize around the current architecture and processing ability, which was probably okay in the mid 1990s. Today, it just results in greatly inferior predictive ability compared to the European models. When you combine the poor model physics with lower resolution compared to the competitors, it becomes clear that we need to reboot the whole thing.

https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2016/06/us-numerical-weather-...

Thank you very much for pointing this out, TIL. To save others the time to look up which model the US National Weather Service (NWS) chose, they selected the [1] Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab (GFDL) FV-3, which the author of the linked blog article above was opposed to. The US has a "weather modeling gap", which is surprising to me, because of the economic (many futures contracts move on forecasts, though many of the forecasting used by financial firms is increasingly from private sources), public policy, and military applications.

[1] http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-national-weather-s...

All I know,

In PR, we where expecting it to shift a bit north. It didn’t.

We are now expecting it to be closer and faster today.

I have been through 5 hurricanes in south florida, and always stayed put. Wilma was a strong 2/weak 3, and it was no joke. Afterwards there were trees uprooted everywhere, concrete power poles snapped like toothpicks. This storm's winds have 2.5x the energy of Wilma's currently.

I would GTFO for this one, it looks really bad.

I second this. Wilma's eye passed over us, which was my first time ever experiencing the eye wall of a hurricane. I vividly remember watching our house's patio enclosure get destroyed from my parents' bedroom.

I wouldn't stick around for this one if I were still in Florida.

I’m in Puerto Rico. Came down for Labor Day weekend to visit family. I’m stuck here with my wife and our dog.

At least we have been able to help family out.

For those following storms I recommend two sites: http://spaghettimodels.com/ and http://www.stormpulse.com

As the models are updated, I'm starting to get more and more concerned about Tampa Bay: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/health/environm...

Windy.com is pretty fun to use! But I have to ask something....

Irma is 180mph. Scroll the Windy.com map to between South America and Antartica. Is that really 330mph winds?

https://www.windy.com/?-63.273,-79.277,3,m:YTadQA

screenshot, just in case: https://imgur.com/a/Jm2ir

Still looking at Windy.com, Alaska is getting hit with 150mph winds right now. I haven't heard about that, but Irma is huge news on the back of Harvey. I guess I might be sheltered a bit. I seldom think about the weather much.

You're looking at kt, knots, so roughly 45+mph winds. http://imgur.com/a/7sIIU

ah, that explains a lot! Thank you for clarifying.

The first number is the wind direction, in degrees, not velocity in a different unit. The UX could be improved with a ° symbol.

I've got a Christmas vacation booked in Providenciales and I give it a 50/50 chance the VRBO I booked will still be there.

People are trying to get off Grand Turk as fast as they can. The airlines have overbooked outbound flights and the airport is closing on Thursday for 48 hours. I'm hoping the damage is minimal. outoftacos mentions that eastern sides of the islands take more of a hit which gives some solace here.

You can see a visualization of the approaching hurricane here: https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/ort...

I was born and raised in Cuba. I lived through Katrina, Wilma, and many others (while in cuba). For the most part, everytime theres any climate discrepancy the primate part of the brain activates -chaos and disorganization arise- Which is, in part related to the amount of casualties. Key things to do: -keep calm -seek higher ground -gather dry food, and non-perishable food (nuts, dry meat, canned fish, etc) -water -detachment of any material things. (Countless lives have been lost because people refuse to let go of their belongings) -dont wait until the last minute to take action.

In Cuba we didn't have nearly a quarter of the resources available in the U.S. We managed to minimize casualties because we kept our cool and didnt give in into despair.

> We managed to minimize casualties because we kept our cool and didnt give in into despair.

It’s been a shit show in Puerto Rico the last couple of days.

I can only imagine. Stay safe out there

Winds started here in Guadeloupe. The sea is bumpy but not that much. Waiting for the night to come to see that will be.

Big thoughts for all those who will be less lucky than us.

You safe? Any updates? How’s it been?

Expecting it here today/tonight (Puerto Rico)

Thank for asking. Guadeloupe Island is now safe, without major damages, but the French northern islands (St Martin and St Barthélémy) have been heavily impacted.

Don't have much news by now, but I saw video feeds that were very concerning.

Stay safe, I wish you the best. And tell us if you're ok tomorrow.

I live in the Turks and Caicos Islands (Providenciales). We were lucky hurricane Matthew missed us last year, I suspect however that we won't be so lucky with Irma.

It's worrisome to say the least.

Good luck out there, and stay safe.

I already bought my flight out of South Florida. The worst should be over by the time it reaches Alabama so I figure anywhere NE/MW is good to hold out.

I am (was) in FL. I fled the state. I pray it doesn't hit texas again, in FL we can at least take a huge hit.

I got a question! What sets the upper bound of ~185mph on hurricanes?

I really need to fill up my truck before there's another post hurricane price hike.

I think the price hike is mainly due to decreased refining capacity, I doubt a hurricane in Miami/SF would have the same effect.

IIRC there's a some refining capacity in NC/SC, also the oil companies know that not everyone knows where there is and isn't refining capacity.

Reported price gouging to the AG last year after Matthew -- gas station charging over $5/gal. Months later, they sent back a form letter with generic information about the definition of price gouging ("it is unlawful to sell [commodities] for an amount that grossly exceeds the average price for that commodity during the 30 days before the declaration of the state of emergency").

Was not impressed with the enforcement. So yes, good to fill up early.

Meanwhile in UK, for example, petrol (aka "gas") is $8.50/gal equivalent (£1.30/litre).

>during the 30 days before the declaration of the state of emergency //

How's that work. So if you hiked your prices and there's no state of emergency declared it's fine but if the state of emergency is declared 4 weeks later you're acting illegally? Seems like an unworkable regulation.

Can you just give people a discount whilst there's no hurricane and remove the discount when you wish; same effect, just legally differentiable??

It looks like the law examines the "trade area":

http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Displ...

So you just need one joker actually selling gas at market price before the storm and the whole discounting scheme falls apart.

Good luck. Gas in Doral went from 2.40 on Sunday to 2.80 today. I guess they can't in trouble for gouging before the disaster hits. Doral is Miami for those not familiar with the area.

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