gymengineer

Thank you so much! I did tiptoe into some of the hurricane threads from September onward. I was already posting less year to year because of life stuff, but I think winter 20/21 kind of broke me. Don’t remember if there was a thread that diagnosed why short term modeling sucked so much that winter. We endured so many WSW’s that busted. Even what was going to be the biggest snow turned into a sleet bomb hours before but there was not even a sleet bomb because the QPF busted while the event was occurring. I hope all’s well with you too.

It did snap back for a cold, active period from late March into early April. Too late in the calendar for much road sticking, but there were 3 accumulating snow events nevertheless all the way down into urban areas, including one in April. IAD recorded 10.4” in March and April. With temps so marginal, though, a repeat of that pattern probably wouldn’t result in all 3 events having snow in the urban corridor today.

This is an incredible watch by the man whose probe captured the infamous storm surge video. The interview with the couple whose house was being destroyed in the video while they were still inside is jaw dropping.

Oh, absolutely. And I included inflation as a factor in my post. It’s definitely not the only factor though. The first list in this document from the NHC accounts for inflation: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/dcmi.pdf The top spots of the list still tilt towards more recent years. And comparing individual cases, inflation doesn’t fix the discrepancies. Like Ivan vs. Frederick is way too large a gap. And no way a repeat of Carol today would be just at Isaias’ level of damage.

Interesting to compare to 1985. A repeat of that season now would be far more devastating than 1985 turned out. It was the most expensive hurricane season for the US up to that point, but Hugo in '89 showed next level possibility in damage. With sea level rise, coastal population explosion, and inflation, those 6 US hurricane landfalls from 1985 would likely total well into the tens of billions nowadays. These past few seasons have shown how vulnerable presently the US is to hurricane damage. The last 11 consecutive US hurricane landfalls have all been billion-dollar disasters: Ian, Fiona, Nicholas, Ida, Zeta, Delta, Sally, Laura, Isaias, Hanna, and Dorian. Four of these were Category 1 landfalls. Barry in 2019 was the last US hurricane landfall to not hit $1 billion in damage. In the 1980's, a hurricane like Nicholas would probably not even hit $100 million in damage. Even tropical storm landfalls now with some frequency hit the billion dollar damage mark: Fred, Elsa, Eta, Imelda, for example.

I’m sorry if I’m misinterpreting what you’re saying here. Like, are you including January for the “start of winter?” The total snow before January from all 5 seasons you listed as analogs is a paltry 6.0” at DCA, so a mean of 1.2” per season. That’s below 1991-2020 climo.

With Ian's Category 4 landfall, this makes 7 Category 4 or 5 US landfalls in these most recent 6 seasons. This is unprecedented since records have been kept. The previous most Category 4 or 5 US landfalls within 6 seasons was 5 from 1945-1950. All of them hit Florida, and all of them were 115 kt landfalls (the minimum threshold for Category 4). This makes the intensity of this collection of 7 landfalls stand out even more as extreme: 2017- Harvey, 115 kt 2017- Irma, 115 kt 2017- Maria, 135 kt 2018- Michael, 140 kt 2020- Laura, 130 kt 2021- Ida, 130 kt 2022- Ian, 130 kt (prelim, although I wouldn't expect this to drop under Cat 4 in post analysis)

The global models have been pretty unanimous for the past day or so that Julia would only appreciably strengthen in the window right before landfall. For multiple runs, they’ve been showing steady state until around 8 pm tonight.

That’s why the NHC keeps on telling users not to focus on the center path which will shift around, and that hazards can extend well outside of the cone. The NHC explicitly started predicting a 4-7’ storm surge for Lee County starting at 11 pm on Sunday, 9/25. That prediction never went lower on subsequent advisories. You’re not going to convince many on a weather board that Lee County officials did not have enough information to order evacuations sooner.

Duck, NC, is forecasted to reach the third highest water level….not far from the record from Isabel.

CNN’s current count is 64 with an update of 35 from Lee County today.

People being helped to evacuate flooded homes:

I didn’t hear Dr. Knabb say what the poster claimed he said and I’ve had the channel on nonstop. He was saying landfall could be any moment, not that Ian had made landfall.

5 ft storm surge verified for the Myrtle Beach area:

A later tweet by him has a new center reading of 983 mb. As Dr. Knabb pointed out, the wind direction at Georgetown would shift upon the actual landfall. We’ll wait for the NHC’s verdict.

He updated: up to 10.41 MLLW now.

In spite of the satellite appearance, Ian’s wind field on the NW to SE axis is remarkably symmetrical. Obviously nothing near when it was a major hurricane, but the SE side has a large extent of TS force winds even in the low clouds.

And not just the 74/75 knot peak. That’s 10 separate SMFR readings at hurricane force.

I would guess so too, but so much of the discussion in the last couple of pages seemed to be around decision making based on the NHC’s forecasted track.

Is the general public relying too much on the NHC since of course it’s not the NHC that actually orders evacuations? Lee County ordered mandatory zone A and B evacuations Monday morning. I just think emergency management should be the primary public facing entity for decision making, not a forecasting agency.

Folks, just read the advisory. NHC has already stated Ian is moving NNE at 15 degrees. Exact NNE is 22.5

Extrapolated pressure is 946.0 min.