Hurricane Maria

[LongBeachSurfFreak]

11 minutes ago, Hurricane Agnes said:

Looks like the coast is getting raked by the outer band and some of that band's clouds is reaching all the way up to NY & NE.  Also a bit OT for the thread but I know the NHC has called Lee "tiny" and you can see why, despite the fact that his winds are currently a wee bit stronger than Maria's -

 

 

Great shot!!! Lee really is tiny. Though despite his stronger winds his IKE is mere percentage points of Maria's.

Maria is another massive wave machine. Tremendous fetch of tropical storm fource winds is really what's needed to maximize swell production. That and movement twords land (currently twords the NE coast) produces captured fetch further enhancing wave hights. 

[Hurricane Agnes]

19 minutes ago, LongBeachSurfFreak said:

Great shot!!! Lee really is tiny. Though despite his stronger winds his IKE is mere percentage points of Maria's.

Maria is another massive wave machine. Tremendous fetch of tropical storm fource winds is really what's needed to maximize swell production. That and movement twords land (currently twords the NE coast) produces captured fetch further enhancing wave hights. 

One part of the 5 pm discussion noted this -

Maria is a large hurricane. Hurricane-force winds extend outward up
to 105 miles (165 km) from the center and tropical-storm-force winds
extend outward up to 205 miles (335 km). NOAA buoy 41002, located
about 100 miles west-northwest of Maria's center, recently reported
sustained winds of 44 mph (70 km/h) and a gust to 56 mph (91 km/h).

She's not as big as Sandy was but I think as she weakens, she will expand further.  The issue at this point is whether that kicker cold front actually gets to the coast when progged.  It has been sitting almost stationary for the past couple days over the MW -

 

[gymengineer]

The firm AIR is estimating 40-85 billion dollars in just insured damage from Maria and noting more than half of Puerto Rico's residences are uninsured. That's higher than their estimate for the other two hurricanes. Katrina's insured damage was 41 billion.

https://mobile.twitter.com/WSJ/status/912426508538572801

[Baroclinicity]

On 9/24/2017 at 6:53 PM, andyhb said:

For reference, that's the first NWS radar completely destroyed since Andrew took out the Miami one. A downburst did crumple the radome of KDRT back in 2001, but the internal components were not exposed.

I also found this one from the Reno radar back in 2008:

http://apollo.lsc.vsc.edu/classes/remote/lecture_notes/radar/88d/KRGXDomeFailure.pdf

Radome was smashed, then a few days later another high wind event finished the job.

[LVLion77]

Great shot!!! Lee really is tiny. Though despite his stronger winds his IKE is mere percentage points of Maria's.

Maria is another massive wave machine. Tremendous fetch of tropical storm fource winds is really what's needed to maximize swell production. That and movement twords land (currently twords the NE coast) produces captured fetch further enhancing wave hights. 

After Jose and Maria wave action you wonder how much more east coast beaches can take, particularly if we have a more active nor’easter season. I have family at the Jersey shore who indicate a lot of beach sand swallowed up by Jose alone.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Swanky]

Lurker here.

 

Would anyone happen to have (or know where to find) the surface analysis map of Maria prior to landfall? I can't seem to find it anywhere. 

[Coach McGuirk]

3 hours ago, Swanky said:

Lurker here.

 

Would anyone happen to have (or know where to find) the surface analysis map of Maria prior to landfall? I can't seem to find it anywhere. 

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at5+shtml/211553.shtml?swath#contents  

Maria went Cat 5 over Dominica and Cat 5 landfall over Puerto Rico. 

[hlcater]

1 minute ago, Coach McGuirk said:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at5+shtml/211553.shtml?swath#contents  

Maria went Cat 5 over Dominica and Cat 5 landfall over Puerto Rico. 

Maria actually made landfall as a 155mph Cat 4. It weakened in the last advisory right before landfall.

[Swanky]

11 hours ago, Coach McGuirk said:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at5+shtml/211553.shtml?swath#contents  

Maria went Cat 5 over Dominica and Cat 5 landfall over Puerto Rico. 

I was thinking if there was a more detailed map, like the surface analysis products on the forecast maps section of the nws page.

[Hurricane Agnes]

Well Maria is now officially a Tropical Storm.  5pm update -

ZCZC MIATCPAT5 ALL
TTAA00 KNHC DDHHMM

BULLETIN
Tropical Storm Maria Advisory Number  43
NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL       AL152017
500 PM EDT Tue Sep 26 2017

...MARIA CONTINUES TO MOVE SLOWLY NORTHWARD...


SUMMARY OF 500 PM EDT...2100 UTC...INFORMATION
----------------------------------------------
LOCATION...34.1N 73.0W
ABOUT 160 MI...260 KM ESE OF CAPE HATTERAS NORTH CAROLINA
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...70 MPH...110 KM/H
PRESENT MOVEMENT...N OR 360 DEGREES AT 7 MPH...11 KM/H
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...974 MB...28.77 INCHES

Meanwhile Lee has intensified as a CAT 2 and forecast to possibly be a CAT 3 - a storm that all but dissipated just a week ago!

[Hurricane Agnes]

Maria back to a minimal CAT 1 again (and Lee now a CAT 3) -

000
WTNT35 KNHC 271448
TCPAT5

BULLETIN
Hurricane Maria Advisory Number  46
NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL       AL152017
1100 AM EDT Wed Sep 27 2017

...MARIA TURNS NORTH-NORTHEASTWARD...


SUMMARY OF 1100 AM EDT...1500 UTC...INFORMATION
-----------------------------------------------
LOCATION...35.6N 72.6W
ABOUT 165 MI...265 KM E OF CAPE HATTERAS NORTH CAROLINA
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...75 MPH...120 KM/H
PRESENT MOVEMENT...NNE OR 15 DEGREES AT 6 MPH...9 KM/H
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...978 MB...28.88 INCHES

Updated cone -

 

[BuffaloWeather]

I think Puerto Rico was the hardest hit location of anyone this year in the tropics. Looks like things are absolutely terrible down there right now.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/353163-san-juan-mayor-i-am-begging-begging-anyone-who-can-hear-us-to

[HurricaneJosh]

Hey, guys! Hope you're all well. I know I'm not here much these days, but I saw y'all were discussing my chase, so I thought I'd pop in and say hey.

Now that I've had time to process it, I'd say MARIA is a Top-3 chase for me in terms of the quality/violence of the eyewall. It helped that I was in the perfect spot: at the coast, just a few miles right of the exact landfall point. I got totally right-front-quadded. The NHC's verdict (high-end Cat 4) felt right to me-- that is, not quite a Cat 5 but harsher than other Cat 4s I've been in. (Yes, that's a subjective take, not a scientific opinion.) I'd say MARIA was in the neighborhood of PATRICIA, but much larger and longer-lasting. (PATRICIA was a total microcane-- the extreme winds lasted about 17 minutes in my location-- whereas MARIA was pretty large and the extreme winds went on for over an hour.)

My lowest pressure was 929.4 mb. (Actually, that's my lowest *recorded* pressure. I saw the barometer dip below 929, but the 1-min sampling didn't catch the absolute extreme.)

Below is my video. It's long, so if you want to skip to the daytime Cat-4 eyewall porn, the red-meat stuff goes from 6:18 to 6:21 am (timestamp in lower left), then there's a brightening/calming as I apparently graze the edge of the eye (although the lowest pressure did not happen at that time), and then the really severe sh*t starts around 6:56 am. By 7:15 am you can't see a damn thing, and I'd say it's the most extreme eyewall whiteout I've experienced in my decades of chasing (with the single possible exception of PATRICIA). The worst of it was over before 8 am.

Oh, one point: Be careful of trying to estimate peaks winds based on the damage to buildings-- especially in the town where I was (Palmas Del Mar). Two points: 1) Puerto Rico builds for hurricane winds and 2) this is a very affluent area. All of the buildings there are **solid concrete**. (Actually, this applies to a lot of these tropical islands, American and not. They don't have mobile homes and where they have means they don't build wood houses like we do on the mainland. They know better.) Damage to roofs and windows was heavy.

Enjoy!

 

[HarveyLeonardFan]

Thanks for the clarification Josh and thanks for your great work covering the hurricanes this season.  I'm glad you're getting some much deserved national publicity via Weather Nation.  The damage photos I saw suggested CAT 3 damage but I will defer to your better informed on the ground opinion.  You seemed to get out of the Southern coastal part of the island en route to the SAN Juan airport rather quickly.  How did you manage to get out so quickly?  Lots of credible reporters on the ground have been saying the roads are impassable.

[HurricaneJosh]

48 minutes ago, HarveyLeonardFan said:

Thanks for the clarification Josh and thanks for your great work covering the hurricanes this season.  I'm glad you're getting some much deserved national publicity via Weather Nation.  The damage photos I saw suggested CAT 3 damage but I will defer to your better informed on the ground opinion.  You seemed to get out of the Southern coastal part of the island en route to the SAN Juan airport rather quickly.  How did you manage to get out so quickly?  Lots of credible reporters on the ground have been saying the roads are impassable.

Thanks! The drive from Humacao to San Juan was pure hell and I was sure I wouldn't make it-- I was planning to sleep in the car on the side of the highway-- but somehow I did make it.

Re: your wind estimate... I don't want to belabor the point, but this is important to address: On what basis do you say the damage looked like Cat 3? Like I said above, everything there is solid concrete, so these buildings will survive even Cat-5 winds. The trees where I rode out the cyclone were 100% defoliated and in many cases debarked, and there were (as you saw in my video) many palms decrowned or snapped mid-trunk, which suggests really extreme winds. Really, only structural engineers-- guys like Tim Marshall-- are qualified to look at buildings and say, "This is Cat-4 damage," and "This is Cat-3 damage." The rest of us (me included, despite having been in the cores of 36 hurricanes/typhoons) are just kinda making it up.

That point aside, thanks for your very kind words. I appreciate it.

[HurricaneJosh]

P.S. To add to my point... The damage caused by HARVEY in Rockport and Aransas Pass looked much more dramatic than the damage caused by MARIA in Palmas Del Mar. In HARVEY I saw complete building failures, whereas I did not see that in MARIA. But guess what? MARIA's winds were much stronger than HARVEY's. It's just that Rockport and Aransas Pass have lots of older, wood-frame or lightweight-metal industrial buildings-- and lots of mobile homes-- whereas in Palmas Del Mar, everything is solid concrete.

[wxmx]

Agree...same goes for Homestead during Andrew. Wooden frame houses and mobile homes don't stand a chance against a cat 4/5...OTOH reinforced concrete buildings will remain with little to no structural damage. Yes, windows, doors, roof tiles and damage related to falling trees/flying debris may occur, but you won't see a clean slab in the aftermath of a cat 4/5.

[HarveyLeonardFan]

30 minutes ago, wxmx said:

Agree...same goes for Homestead during Andrew. Wooden frame houses and mobile homes don't stand a chance against a cat 4/5...OTOH reinforced concrete buildings will remain with little to no structural damage. Yes, windows, doors, roof tiles and damage related to falling trees/flying debris may occur, but you won't see a clean slab in the aftermath of a cat 4/5.

Andrew destroyed entire shopping centers. The type of structure was wholly irrelevant. Everything was destroyed in south Dade county and anyone on the ground there will attest to this. The damage in Puerto Rico although severe and politically momentous is not comparable to Andrew in any way, shape or form and I'm basing this assertion on aerial footage and my 1992 experience on the ground.

[HurricaneJosh]

1 hour ago, wxmx said:

Agree...same goes for Homestead during Andrew. Wooden frame houses and mobile homes don't stand a chance against a cat 4/5...OTOH reinforced concrete buildings will remain with little to no structural damage. Yes, windows, doors, roof tiles and damage related to falling trees/flying debris may occur, but you won't see a clean slab in the aftermath of a cat 4/5.

Exactly.

 

38 minutes ago, HarveyLeonardFan said:

Andrew destroyed entire shopping centers. The type of structure was wholly irrelevant. Everything was destroyed in south Dade county and anyone on the ground there will attest to this. The damage in Puerto Rico although severe and politically momentous is not comparable to Andrew in any way, shape or form and I'm basing this assertion on aerial footage and my 1992 experience on the ground.

ANDREW was a stronger hurricane than MARIA (Cat 5 versus Cat 4), so it inflicted heavier wind damage. I'm not sure why you're arguing that point, since it's to be expected.

But, yes, the type of structure *is* relevant.  A shopping center can be constructed well or constructed badly. Pre-ANDREW, a lot of Florida was constructed like crap. Now it's much better. The minimal damage in Naples after IRMA (during which the city had officially measured gusts over 120 knots) is a good indicator of how far Florida has come.

[Ginx snewx]

One thing Josh there were thousands of wood structures/houses destroyed in PR

[HurricaneJosh]

7 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

One thing Josh there were thousands of wood structures/houses destroyed in PR

Yeah, to be clear, I'm talking about where I was: Palmas Del Mar. Nothing there is wood.

P.S. I added clarification to my original post to say "where they have means" they don't build with wood.

[HarveyLeonardFan]

At the risk of sounding aggressively contrarian I doubt the validity of those 120 knot gusts in Naples. I saw all the reporters from twc and the three cable news nets and every reporter was able to continue standing up all the while remaining live, on air. And some of the networks were on balconies and elevated parking garages.

[Ginx snewx]

9 minutes ago, HurricaneJosh said:

Yeah, to be clear, I'm talking about where I was: Palmas Del Mar. Nothing there is wood.

P.S. I added clarification to my original post to say "where they have means" they don't build with wood.

Yea I know you knew that, your video was as intense as any. I know you apologized for the length but in fact the human element added a lot. Rather than just the chaser showing wind, it brought faces to the fear, much like Haiyan, Patricia

[Ginx snewx]

Keys hurricane summary

http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&product=PSH&issuedby=KEY

[HurricaneJosh]

14 minutes ago, HarveyLeonardFan said:

At the risk of sounding aggressively contrarian I doubt the validity of those 120 knot gusts in Naples. I saw all the reporters from twc and the three cable news nets and every reporter was able to continue standing up all the while remaining live, on air. And some of the networks were on balconies and elevated parking garages.

Max winds in a hurricane happen in narrow streaks. Winds will vary greatly even within one city. (See CELIA 1970 in Corpus Christi for good example of this.)

Whether or not folks can stand on downwind balconies or in parking structures is not a good way of assessing wind speeds. In Cat-5 Super Typhoon HAIYAN, I stood on a balcony during the worst of it. (It was stupid and I almost got killed, but I did it.)

10 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Yea I know you knew that, your video was as intense as any. I know you apologized for the length but in fact the human element added a lot. Rather than just the chaser showing wind, it brought faces to the fear, much like Haiyan, Patricia

Thank you so much, Steve! I really appreciate that. I was really tortured about the length, and in the end, I'm glad I included those elements. I'm psyched you feel like they add to it. Awesome.

[HurricaneJosh]

3 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Keys hurricane summary

http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&product=PSH&issuedby=KEY

Yeah, I was commenting about this on Twitter today. The wind data from the Keys in IRMA was really blah across the board. Just not impressed.

[Ginx snewx]

13 minutes ago, HurricaneJosh said:

Yeah, I was commenting about this on Twitter today. The wind data from the Keys in IRMA was really blah across the board. Just not impressed.

Mark Sudduth is coming out with a report from his remote data on the Keys

[HurricaneJosh]

8 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Mark Sudduth is coming out with a report from his remote data on the Keys

Yeah, he mentioned to me he's going down to Marathon to get that station. I'm excited to see what he got. I love his work-- it's very cool.

[Windspeed]

What the hell?

The public safety department says it’s the responsibility of funeral homes, crematoriums, and hospitals to notify and send or bring bodies to the forensic institute if they’re possible hurricane-related deaths.

But all 10 funeral homes and crematorium directors BuzzFeed News spoke to said they haven’t received any specific guidance on what they’re supposed to do with the bodies of people who died as a result of the hurricane. Ortiz confirmed to BuzzFeed News that no official guidance was sent to funeral homes and crematoriums, many of which take in bodies that don’t need to go to the hospital first.

Ortiz says the directors of the facilities should know better. “They know that the place that they do all the scientific investigations is at the institute,” she said. “The funeral homes are in constant communication with the institute because they’re the ones that bring the bodies and take them back.”

Still, cremating a body requires written approval from the forensic institute — which has the option to ask for the bodies to be sent to San Juan for examination before they’re burned. But the funeral and crematorium directors who spoke to BuzzFeed News said the institute has given them permission to cremate dozens of bodies of people who died of hurricane-related causes, and were not asked to send them to the institute.

Asked specifically about this, Ortiz reiterated it’s on crematoriums and funeral homes to communicate with the forensic institute if they think a death should be examined for inclusion on the death toll.

“We have heard,” that possible hurricane victims were being cremated without examination, Ortiz said. “We aren’t saying that they’re totally true or totally false. But what we are saying is, if you have a case like that, send us all the information to be able to look at it” before cremation.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/nidhiprakash/puerto-rico-cremations?utm_term=.ak8Bpg3PE#.jfRrwg4LW

[Windspeed]

Heavy rains the past few days and issues with the spillway have put the Guajataca Dam under significant threat of failure. Placing this here as it's obviously still an aftermath issue by ol'Maria:

BULLETIN - EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED
Flash Flood Warning
National Weather Service San Juan PR
1110 AM AST SAT OCT 28 2017

The National Weather Service in San Juan has issued a

* Flash Flood Warning for... A Dam Failure in...
Isabela Municipality in Puerto Rico...
Quebradillas Municipality in Puerto Rico...

* Until 1100 AM AST Sunday

*At 1120 AM AST, the Guajataca Dam remains in a compromised state. Residences and buildings down stream of this dam remain under a flooding threat should the dam fail. This situation is expected to continue for the next several days. This is a correction to remove San Sebastian.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
Community that have been ordered to evacuate over the past days along the Rio Guajataca and continue to be advised to not return. They are advised to comply with those order and not become complacent lured by a false sense of security. Should a complete failure occur this message would be followed by a Flash Flood Emergency.