Days Since Incident (2022) | Hacker News Reader

Days Since Incident (2022)

neal.fun

Days Since Incident – tracker of natural disasters on Earth - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33018771 - Sept 2022 (38 comments)

Why does category 5 hurricane not also constitute a category 2 hurricane. Seems silly to differentiate by what level they end up at when a cat 5 has also, by definition, made it to cat 2 at some point.

Other than that, this is fun.

I think it makes sense to differentiate them, just as you would differentiate them if it was displayed as a graph of "number of hurricanes by category". If you only include the highest category, you miss out on data that might also be useful, for instance whether there have been more category 1 hurricanes compared to category 5.

If it didn't differentiate them and the last category 5 hurricane was 110 days ago but the last category 1 hurricane was 2 days ago, how would you learn about the category 1 hurricane? In your example it would just show hurricane categories 1-5 sequentially all bunched together, so you'd also be duplicating data which wouldn't be that useful.

Implicitly what it’s saying is: “Hurricane reaching a maximum category of X”

That was my assumption, too, but the website shows 110 days since the last cat 5 but 114 days since the last cat 2, and they're not the same event.

More than that: the last cat 5 is "Otis" while the last cat 2 is "Tammy". AFAIK they are named in alphabetical order?

Something seems fishy in this dataset.

I mean, you can ask the meteorologists about the process of naming, but those hurricanes actually existed, on the dates suggested, so I'm not sure what's "fishy" about it.

Hurricane Tammy, Cat 2, October 18, 2023: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Tammy

Hurricane Otis, Cat 5, October 22, 2023: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Otis

I believe that the naming relates to which ocean they're forming in, but it's probably good for you to do your own research, so you can clear up any "fishiness" yourself.

I think the poster is suggesting that the Cat 5 should also count as a Cat 2 as Cat 5 is stronger than Cat 2.

There are several region dependent different name lists, just have a look at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone_naming

Came here to ask the same thing. I always assumed a higher class necessarily was a lower class before. Curious.

The purpose of this hurricane rating scale is to "provide some indication of the potential damage and flooding a hurricane will cause upon landfall." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffir%E2%80%93Simpson_scale

I'm curious how is this being updated.

Every section has an information button which says where the data is sourced from.

I think the question may have been more about method of updating.

I know the USGS websites have great API support, and I imagine the NASA solar flare reporting does as well, so I expect most of this is automatic.

The ones going to Wikipedia articles must be done by hand, so those will stop being updated when Neal gets bored of updating.

Any seasoned engineer would hardcode the values at the bottom of the page.

Isn't there a volcanic eruption happening Iceland right now? I think that one is already out of date.

Seems like their source hasn't updated this

https://volcano.si.edu/faq/index.cfm?question=eruptionsbyyea...

There are 500 metre high Megatsunami? O_O

Sure, sure, don't worry about it, but being told that the tsunamis in The Abyss could be real? Good lord that is shocking to me.

Some of the effects of a wave like that can be read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Lituya_Bay_earthquake_and...

"Over 30 million cubic meters of rock fell from a height of several hundred meters into the bay, creating the megatsunami."

Is there one for Boeing also?

What constitutes a volcanic eruption? Thinking about Iceland right now.

Not sure if you're referring to the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull that shut down air travel, but that was a VEI 4 eruption, and there have been more recent VEI 4 eruptions (the most recent, according to this, was the Fukutoku-Oka-no-Ba eruption in 2021) and so it doesn't show.

There is literally one happening right now: https://www.youtube.com/live/LmqYgnsmSSA?si=b9jBEFDLE7QHry2_

Sure, but I don't think it's even at VEI 4 yet.

This site seems to be saying that VEI 4 is the max it could reach, if I'm understanding it right: https://gdacs.org/report.aspx?eventid=1000080&episodeid=7&ev...

I guess the Smithsonian site is not updated regularly.

i wish there was an additional line with each (known) previous incident

I like the design of this site, but honestly these are things just not worth worrying about.

I'm fairly certain the point of this page isn't to worry about these events. Knowing the type of things Neal builds (you should definitely explore his other stuff), it's likely just for fun, and an interesting way to present this information.

The TLD is literally .fun

That too

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