NeonPeon

Such a tiny little core. Wonder what the ceiling is.

The educated people you know can't read a weather forecast then. Preparing for the worst here meant a very normal track deviation of just a few miles in either direction causing the worst of a storm surge to go into one of two bays, it had nothing to do with the storm being stronger than forecast.

You've started strawmanning "FLORIDA WILL BE WIPED OFF THE FACE OF THE MAP, THIS IS THE END TIMES" and now are in the position of waving away significant destruction, even as it's being uncovered. Stop responding to stupid media by having diametrically opposed equally stupid opinions. Stop characterizing the most extreme opinion as definitive. That is why public discourse is broken. Try ignoring the sensationalism, listening to the calm, intelligent voices, then you can have an adult conversation. Or, carry on, I guess.

Fort Myers they were almost identical. Naples a foot higher, yes. I think that reflects the fact that the hurricane at a lower latitude was stronger, and that in this case anyway, the surge was reactive to the immediate intensity. When I was watching Naples yesterday, I thought we'd see much more surge than Helene in the area between Bonita Beach and Englewood, say. I certainly thought that Fort Myers would be significantly higher than Helene, and it was basically the same. Obviously that narrow band that got the worst onshore wind got whacked, and that never happened with Helene as it was miles away. I think the fact that Milton was small also means that the direction of wave travel wasn't the same, nor for as long a period of time. You can see that in the fact that the surges recorded for Helene are broader, instead of spikes you have hills.

You can compare the forecast surge to the reports we do have and draw your own conclusions without being obsessed with overperformance/underperformance or somehow emotionally involved. Surge is an interesting thing to discuss because it doesn't have a linear relationship with storm strength and has many confounding variables including very granular detail with regard to final landfall track, the tide, topography of bays etc. etc. There had been a prevalent thought that this storm would punch above its weight surge wise due to its antecedent strength. That doesn't seem to be the case, in that the really damaging worst case surge we see is is mainly confined to the southern side of the core of the storm, which was afterall quite a small area relative to other hurricanes, but there are lots of details to this. For instance, the breadth of its surge at the lower end is in keeping with the forecast, with areas like Naples and even further south getting surges in line with forecast. The higher end of the forecast also seems to have verified, but in a narrower band. There's also the risk management side to the forecast in terms of messaging. Forecasters became increasingly confident that landfall north of tampa bay wasn't going to occur, but the risk was massive. Narrow or not, if the worst surge was someplace else, just a little further south in Charlotte Harbor, or a little further north in Tampa Bay, and you see worse effects and they had to be advertised. The other thing occurring is it's pretty natural to make comparisons between this and the previous hurricane, especially in areas where there are similar effects despite completely different tracks. Size matters.

I'm not sure. I know someone on Pine Island, and the surge was bad but not as bad as Helene. Obviously it greatly matters exactly where you are, but excepting the area that got really nailed with the back end of the eye, the surge seems significant but not catastrophic.

The surge seems to have been less broad than expected in terms of the area affected with the worst of it. Many places were on the level of Helene. The other thing is that this thing threaded the needle in terms of surge. Charlotte Harbor was just south of the worst and east of it when the storm came in, and the worst surge seems to have behaved like this was a small hurricane, with a small core, even though the windfield was more dispersed. Obviously a bullet was dodged with Tampa Bay also. So it would have been worse further north, or further south.

Ft Myers water level has now peaked. Slightly higher than Helene but two feet lower than Ian. Now second worst since that station was in. The surge forecast around Tampa Bay is just having to sit on a fence, given uncertainty of landfall detail, but the south of landfall storm surge seems to be underperforming expectation in general thankfully. The surges we can see so far are very similar to Helene, which while such a big beast, passed these areas so much more distantly, and without these winds driving the water.

Fort Myers at 5+ ft of storm surge, still increasing. https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/stationhome.html?id=8725520

Naples surge seems to have peaked. Fort Meyers shooting up at the moment. Unfortunately there's no data for any of the places you'd expect to have the worst of this.

You are fighting a strawman. Yes, there was overhyped coverage of this storm, if you consume awful media, just like there's awful coverage of all sorts if you don't know what to read and how to read. What there really was, from professional places, whether less sensationalized news or otherwise, was the distribution of a very accurate forecast that seems to be verifying with some really significant accuracy. The uncertainty baked into that forecast is necessary, and yes, it could have been worse if this was N of tampa, but the very near risk of that happening, given the uncertainty, meant that that worst case scenario, still eminently plausible, needed to be discussed and communicated, and acted upon as though it came to pass. Now, if some cretins were talking as though this hurricane was going to be a cat 5 at landfall and erase Tampa off the map, then those folks are idiots, however I haven't heard them on here. The vast majority of discussion has been reasonable, and thanks to the mods for that. Yes, people nerded out when the storm achieved as close to perfection as a hurricane can. That's kindof what a weather nerd of any stripe should do. The idiots I've heard most today have been an entirely different, equally unhelpful flavor.

And it would remain a sensible risk assessment.

How is it deviating from a forecast while remaining within the cone? I thought the idea explicitly was to not pay attention to the center line, hence removing it.

The earth is 4 billion years old, some dates for the biblical flood something around 2300BC. Property development on the west coast of florida... that strikes me as relatively modern. To give some actual context, the population of the world during biblical floods was less than 3 times the population of just Florida's population, now. In other words biblical floods aren't biblical, as concerns human impact. Modern floods are far more biblical, excepting the fact that oddly we know about their statistical likelihood and build the way we do anyway. The only relevance to the bible here might be the bit about the foolish man who builds his house upon the sand.

The two main effects of this storm that have been underscored are 1) storm surge and 2) a heavy rain event including PRE I could ask what the obsession with bust is in general, but I'd imagine the things need to have a chance to occur or not before you can assess... whether they've occurred or not. The tornados are an unwelcome surprise.