gallopinggertie

It really depends on the species. Some birds (like petrels or albatrosses) can fly for weeks at a time over the ocean without stopping! Other species without that level of endurance might not be able to make it.

I suppose that’s true. I posted a comment there urging people there to take this seriously—hopefully someone reads it and decides to evacuate. If not, well, there’s nothing I can do.

And the more it weakens, the more complacent people will be, which isn’t good.

Looking at the r/Tampa subreddit, I’m concerned. Seems lots of people aren’t taking this seriously, brushing it off because “oh it’ll just weaken to a cat 3.”

Just to the south of the bay (like by 15 miles). Would that be enough for Tampa to escape the surge?

You said “Florida will handle this with ease” though…it’s wild to make that statement confidently at this point.

And landfall right over the Tampa Bay area. At face value, that would be their worst hurricane since 1921.

Now skirts the coast from France to Denmark:

Though Kirk will be long extratropical by the time it reaches Europe, it’s cool how the last forecast point is just southwest of London, UK.

Nice opening line, lol.

I think that’s correct. And unfortunately there is a dearth of weather stations in that area—it looks like there’s no stations at all on the immediate coast between St. Mark’s and Cedar Key.

Despite weakening to Cat 1 intensity before landfall, Krathon seems to have brought impressively strong winds to Kaohsiung. There are some videos on r/taiwan of a convenience storm whose entrance got blasted in by a huge gust, as a worker tried to hold the door in. But one visitor wrote the following comment on that subreddit, which seems encouraging: “I’m an American tourist who happened to be in Kaohsiung during the typhoon. It’s clear that this is the worst typhoon this city has seen in years, since many older trees were uprooted. I am impressed by how well Taiwan responds to and prepares for these storms! I went outside as soon as I thought it was safe today, and there were already workers cleaning up the tree damage. Just as importantly, the damage seemed to be limited to trees and signs. The buildings seemed unscathed by the storm, despite this apparently being the worst Kaohsiung has experienced in a while, which means they were designed very well.”

Maybe there should be a second tier of flash flood watch for especially dangerous/unusual events.

That’s probably true, but I meant as the numbers stand at this moment.

Though if Sandy counts, that would be second place and Helene would be fourth.

I reviewed the tracks of all the typhoons on Wikipedia’s category “typhoons in Taiwan”—it’s something like 80 typhoons in total. The only one that made landfall on Taiwan’s west coast was Wayne in 1986, but that was just at minimal Cat 1 intensity. So, if Krathon does in fact make this right hook and hit Kaohsiung as a 125-mph typhoon, it would be quite unusual indeed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Wayne_(1986)

Hopefully the track changes. krathon is already a powerful and large typhoon.

Continuing this season’s trend of typhoons threatening major cities, Typhoon Krathon (what a name!) is forecast to strike Kaohsiung, Taiwan as a Cat 3-equivalent. Kaohsiung is a major city with nearly 3 million inhabitants. I would guess that a direct hit is rare there because of its position on the southwest coast of Taiwan. The predicted landfall is still a couple days a way, though, so plenty of time for the track to change.

It must be pretty unusual for the highest recorded gust to be so far inland.

61 gust to 88 at this station near Valdosta: https://www.weather.gov/wrh/timeseries?site=1771W&hours=72

Extreme wind warning just added for a few counties in southern Georgia, including Valdosta.

Can someone shed some light on how such a quickly-moving storm is able to RI? I always heard that fast forward motion inhibits intensification. But obviously that’s not always true.

Just 17 for Wilma?

Also some 60 mph gusts at a couple Tampa-area airport stations.

NHC has Helene maintaining Cat 2 strength well into southern Georgia.