Otis: Tropical storm to category 5 hurricane in 24h | Hacker News Reader

Otis: Tropical storm to category 5 hurricane in 24h

nhc.noaa.gov

85 pointshelaoban22 comments

I've been following the storm on Windy[1] for a few hours and it's really insane how massive it is..

[1] https://www.windy.com/-Satellite-satellite?satellite,18.937,...

I have not seen that site before. The flashes are lighting, I take it?

Nifty.

Their wind and storm predictions are really accurate, I use them every time I go on a mountain hike. I think windguru is still a bit better for sailing.

IDK, Tammy look much worse at this time...https://www.windy.com/25.065/-60.732?22.166,-60.732,6

I don't think massive is a good word for it. The supporting systems around it are not of the usual size for a storm of this intensity. It's easy to miss it on the wind map but then, all of a sudden, there are 75kt winds right around Acapulco.

https://www.windy.com/?17.049,-98.761,5

Most of 24h predictions showed Category 1 or below: https://twitter.com/burgwx/status/1716972676471021754

Quite a reminder about our forecasting capabilities.

Even though this is in Mexico, the beginning of this year has taught me to expect PG&E outages all across the Bay Area.

My area dropped for 3 days due to a stiff breeze with 20mph gusts.

Amateur hour at PG&E for the past 10 years

2018 Camp Fire survivor enters the chat.

Let me tell you about PSPSes and living on generator for weeks at a time for 4-5x per summer. Home insurance tripled. Bounced to SW TX after 45 years.

I've never really paid too much attention to NOAA releases. Are they normally this impassioned?

> A nightmare scenario is unfolding for southern Mexico this evening with rapidly intensifying Otis approaching the coastline.

They can get pretty colorful. The 2005 hurricane season had some NOAA releases so interesting that xkcd did a comic on them https://xkcd.com/1126/

Yes, they're often impassioned when they're deadly serious, emphasis on the deadly, about the impact of the weather. They generally write with more humanity than might be expected of any other service — but they also so often bear awful news that is so often summarily ignored, that I can't fault them for their impassioned pleas to 'please, pay attention to us, it will prevent your avoidable deaths'.

Not mentioned is that this is the second time this year that a hurricane has undergone nearly record-breaking rapid intensification.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Lee_(2023)

Unsurprisingly more energy trapped in the land|sea layer than in years past leads to:

Hurricanes are now twice as likely to zip from minor to whopper than decades ago, study says

https://phys.org/news/2023-10-hurricanes-minor-whopper-decad...

    With warmer oceans serving as fuel, Atlantic hurricanes are now more than twice as likely as before to rapidly intensify from wimpy minor hurricanes to powerful and catastrophic, a study said Thursday.

Andra J. Garner, Observed increases in North Atlantic tropical cyclone peak intensification rates

Scientific Reports (2023).

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-42669-y.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-42669-y

Poor Acapulco.

Yikes. https://www.ventusky.com/?p=14.8;-99.7;5&l=satellite&t=20231...

Any HN users in the area? Plz. report? (if internet & power isn't down)

I dont see a 5 on any models at all.

Check this...https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/storminfo/18E_intensity_late...

Aint that the issue. As the weather becomes more chaotic, the models become less useful. An observation that has caused me a lot of thoughts as we slide into our climate changes we've made this century.

Greetings from a warm and balmy late October in Michigan.

City of one million, this is bad.

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