UPDATE 5 AM AST: Second time in 100-years two coincident Category 4’s in the Atlantic…together, Igor and Julia have the highest coincident intensities on record.
Two major hurricanes exist simultaneously in the North Atlantic, a rare occurrence. With the current intensities (110 knots +) of Julia and Igor, this has only happened 3-times in the past 60-years: 1950 [Dog & Easy], 1958 [Helene & Ilsa], and 1999 [Floyd & Gert]. But Igor and Julia are both very powerful major hurricanes, they are Category 4’s.
- Unprecedented: in our North Atlantic historical records, the forecast intensities of Igor and Julia during the next 12-24 hours will be unprecedented for coincident storms. The only other time (we know of) coincident Category 4+ hurricanes occurred was in 1926 with Hurricane #4 and the Great Miami Hurricane (September 26 at 06:00 UTC).
- More: At 115 knots +, Hurricane Julia is the most intense storm that far in the Eastern Atlantic [-31.8W] joining other major hurricane east of -35W including Frances 1980 and Fred 2009.
- Early morning September 15: 12-hour forecasts indicate a maximum intensity of 120 knots for Julia and 130 knots for Igor. Two coincident Category 4 hurricanes have not occurred since 1950. The only occurrence since 1900 happened on September 15, 1926 at 06Z with Hurricane 4 [115 knots] and the Great Miami Hurricane [120 knots].
- Thus, Igor and Julia will attain have attained coincident intensities that are unprecedented: Igor: 130 knots & Julia: 115 knots.
Hurricane Julia has rapidly intensified during the morning hours of September 15, blowing up to Category 3 + (110 knots). Meanwhile, closer to the USA mainland, Igor was packing 135 knot winds, just the smallest of margins weaker than Category 5. Need 136 knots, but the NHC issues advisories in increments of 5 knots. If Igor does not break the Category 5 plateau, it is possible a post-season re-analysis will bump the storm into the most extreme Saffir-Simpson category.
ACE has really picked up: 90 as of 00Z September 15… [note the Western Pacific is 83% below normal].
Coincident major hurricanes (96 knots +) in the Atlantic basin have not occurred very often since 1950. To ferret out the occurrences, we need to go into the best-track database.
From the HURDAT best-track database, which I have put into a easily digestible form here: Atlantic storm listing, it is trivial with a quick UNIX/Linux command prompt:
cat hurdat_1850_2009 | awk ‘($1 >= 1950 && $8 >= 100) {print $4}’ | sort -n -k 1,1 | uniq -d
1950090406 – 1950090518
1951090712 – 1951090800
1955091806 – 1955091900
1958092618 – 1958092800
1961091112 – 1961091200
1964090918 – 1964091000
1969081806 – 1999091500
1999091506 – 1999091512
But Julia is at 110 knots and Igor at 135 knots. Let’s then see the occurrences of 110 knots+ for two hurricanes:
1950090412
1950090418
1950090500
1958092700
1958092706
1999091506
Only 6 time-instances in the best-track since 1950!
Here are the particulars for those events:
YEAR, #, BASIN, DATE, STAGE, LAT, LON, Wind Speed (knots)
1999 09 NA 1999091506 TS 28.20 -78.50 110
1999 10 NA 1999091506 TS 17.40 -47.90 110
1958 08 NA 1958092700 TS 31.70 -78.10 110
1958 09 NA 1958092700 TS 21.40 -61.20 115
1958 08 NA 1958092706 TS 32.40 -78.50 110
1958 09 NA 1958092706 TS 21.90 -61.30 110
1950 03 NA 1950090500 ET 39.70 -56.80 55
1950 04 NA 1950090500 TS 23.40 -67.70 140
1950 05 NA 1950090500 TS 27.90 -83.10 110
1950 03 NA 1950090418 TS 38.40 -58.10 65
1950 04 NA 1950090418 TS 22.90 -67.20 135
1950 05 NA 1950090418 TS 28.00 -83.80 110
1950 03 NA 1950090412 TS 37.80 -58.80 70
1950 04 NA 1950090412 TS 22.60 -66.80 135
1950 05 NA 1950090412 TS 27.40 -83.20 110
Early September 15, Julia was at 110 knots, Igor at 135 knots, and Karl at 40 knots.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
With all those wasted CPU cycles it’s no wonder we have global warming! Rather than:
cat hurdat_1850_2009 | awk ‘($1 >= 1950 && $8 >= 100) {print $4}’ | sort -n -k 1,1 | uniq -d
try:
awk ‘($1 >= 1950 && $8 >= 100) {print $4}’ < hurdat_1850_2009 | sort -n -k 1,1 | uniq -d
I keed! I keed!! Great story. It's amazing when Nature decides to churn the butter her way. I think too there's a bit of thumb on the scale in the wind speed claims as our ability to measure wind speed is vastly superior to anything we had in the 1950's and earlier, so maybe we should make absolute comparisons with a bit of caution. Surely we had no capability to observer rapid bursts in intensity as seen with this pair. Seen through our 1950's era lenses these bursts could easily have been missed.
Why does storm 12 of 1967 have such odd longitude values?
Yet again as with the last hurricane, Geo Sat shows Julia weakening and in no way a category 4, why does it take so long for NOAA to change the status? Even to my untrained eye one can see it wouldn’t sustain itself with the surrounding air patterns.
Up up and away goes the heat; nature’s heat pump. Where will it go? Hmm.
Given the current MEI values in the Pacific, PDO, AO and SOI, one has to wonder what this winter will look like in the NH. Wow.
ryan: brutally cold…
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says: “…What is this stuff I’ve heard about the US going metric someday (there’s supposed to be a federal law about it) and metric is the system used in the sciences (like meteorology)? And now we’re using obscure seafarer units? How many fathoms deep do storms like this disturb the ocean?”
Most Americans can’t even pronounce kilometer properly, let alone use it as a measure of length.
Leon Brozyna says: “…Might not be majors, but that’s small comfort to the poor farmer in the hills watching his small abode float away in the floods these storms bring to Mexico’s inland regions.”
If you abide in an adobe abode, it won’t float.
For what it’s worth , if the current models are correct Julia probably would have gone undectected a century ago regardless of her strength .
I think if someone could tell us how many joules these swirling heat engines move and what parameters the amount of joules vary with (e.g. does a Cat 4 move twice as much heat as a Cat 2?) that would a very interesting WUWT post, particularly if you could relate this to the effect on global temps!
It is almost a certainty that prior to the satellite monitoring with geostationary imagers every half-hour ~1970, accurate 6-hourly fixes of hurricane intensity are biased low especially in the middle of the Atlantic and Eastern Atlantic.
It is likely Julia would have been detected a century ago due to its proximity to the Cape Verde islands and the swell approaching. Its intensity may not have been known.
There is also no evidence at this point to declare this event the result of AGW. Natural climate signals are still an order or two larger than the AGW signal. This is 2010 and not 2050 or 2100…
Keep close watch on NHC kiddies. They’ll blow the ACE through the roof, especially with no hard evidence on mid-atlantic cyclones. At NHC bad is good. Worse is better. Don’t get your knickers in knots over their always high wind speed estimates. One mph estimate causes Cat. 3 to go to Cat. 4. et cet.
With floods in Tennesee and Pakistan, fires and droughts in Russia and record summer heat in 12 states in the USA (mostly southeast and mid-Atlantic), it seems that we are having a lot of extreme weather this year.
ryanm: huh? you cite 2 floods, one fire, and a drought along with summer heat as examples of a planetary increase in extreme events? are you serious?
…the deluge of the great southern land looks set to continue into our temperate spring and the southern flip of the tropical monsoon….
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
i hope this does not stall the filming of the new MadMax movie even longer
someone down under tell George Miller we have lots dry brown post-apocalyptic desert up my way…;)
Which is the “stormspot” number then?
From: jorgekafkazar on September 15, 2010 at 9:26 am
Some parts of the world are upset over how we can’t even properly spell kilometre. This includes countries so civilized their streets have parking metres.
Doubtless Prince Igor is an Orthodox and Julia is…undressed 🙂
UPDATE: Awesome! The National Hurricane Center (Dennis Feltgen, Public Affairs Officer) issues the following Press release, which is picked up by a bunch of outlets: one example. No credit given to the research here at WWUT which they get WRONG! Phone call to Mr. Feltgen: “we looked this up in HURDAT ourselves this morning”.
Quote of email, received at 11:15 AM eastern:
With both hurricane Igor and Julia reaching Category 4 strength, NOAA’s National Hurricane Center reports these interesting facts:
* Two category four hurricanes existing simultaneously in the Atlantic basin has occurred only one other time since 1900: September 16, 1926 (Hurricane #4 and the Great Miami Hurricane).
* There are only three other incidents of two major hurricanes (Category 3 or higher) at the same time: 1950 (Dog & Easy), 1958 (Helene & Ilsa), and 1999 (Floyd & Gert).
* Hurricane Julia is the most intense hurricane to be located so far in the Eastern North Atlantic.
-Dennis
Dennis Feltgen
Public Affairs Officer
Meteorologist
NOAA Communications& External Affairs
National Hurricane Center
Miami, Fla.
—
As you can see Point number 2 is demonstrably wrong based upon the analysis put forth in the rest of the post. There are MANY other instances of coincident major hurricanes SINCE 1950. I did not look prior to 1950, but there are more. Use the awk statement and change the year/date to 1850. Point number two should read:
* There are only three other incidents of two major hurricanes (Category 3 or higher) at the same time of 110 knots intensity and higher since 1950: 1950 (Dog & Easy), 1958 (Helene & Ilsa), and 1999 (Floyd & Gert).
oops…perhaps a clarification
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
September 15, 2010 at 11:17 am
That because of that unnatural metric system concocted back in the French Revolution to attain a secular state and to alienate people from nature cycles or from anything which could lead to knowledge which from then on was reserved only for Kool-Aid drinkers, however they still don’t get it. (BTW, not our fault)
“”” kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
September 15, 2010 at 1:40 am
*ahem*
1 Knot = 1 Nautical Mile per hour
1 Nautical mile = 6076.12 ft. = 1852 m **
1 Statute mile = 1760 yards = 5280 feet
** Definition: [n] a unit of length used in navigation; equivalent to the distance spanned by one minute of arc in latitude; 1,852 meters
1) Also called: international nautical mile, air mile a unit of length, used esp. in navigation, equivalent to the average length of a minute of latitude, and corresponding to a latitude of 45°, i.e. 1852 m (6076.12 ft.)
2) a former British unit of length equal to 1853.18 m (6080 ft.), which was replaced by the international nautical mile in 1970
1 knot = 1.152 miles per hour = 1.85 kilometer per hour
What is this stuff I’ve heard about the US going metric someday (there’s supposed to be a federal law about it) and metric is the system used in the sciences (like meteorology)? And now we’re using obscure seafarer units? How many fathoms deep do storms like this disturb the ocean? “”””
Well kadaka; I believe you forgot to add that one Nautical mile is also 1000 Fathoms, so strictly speaking a fathom is 1.852 metres or 6.07612 ft. Well at least it used to be; but they keep dicking around with the units; it’s almost as bad as the Pyramid Inch; that is used to read the history of the world in the Great Pyramid.
But on a more important note; that sneaky Julia is staying well away from Igor’s now cold aftermath, so she can soak up her own BTUs.
Ah at last the media worrywarts can revel in the coming disaster.
“”” kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
September 15, 2010 at 11:17 am
From: jorgekafkazar on September 15, 2010 at 9:26 am
Most Americans can’t even pronounce kilometer properly, let alone use it as a measure of length.
Some parts of the world are upset over how we can’t even properly spell kilometre. This includes countries so civilized their streets have parking metres. “””
Well I dunno how Jorge spells/pronounces it; but I for one am not among the Kill Ommita crowd; simply refuse to be. The metre (meter) is the IS unit of length and k for kilo (keylow) is the approved prefix for 1000 of; so that means it should be keylowmeter; but we Kiwis speak kinda lazy, so I’m sure that I say kil-uh-meter sans hyphens. And I don’t buy into the parking metre bit at all; for that matter I don’t buy into the parking meter either. I simply refuse to go any place where I would have to feed coins into some bandit machine for the privilege of parking on a public street or place.
So if you are a shop owner; put up parking meters if you don’t want me to shop at your place; because I won’t if you do.
Good stuff, Ryan! Thanks for hitting the t-list so I didn’t miss it.
So what went right with Julia to allow her to attain such stature? Seems as though she is right there at, or maybe slightly beyond, the max potential intensity, which happens very rarely.
Also curious as to what you’re doing at NRL. Going to fix their N-GFDL or COAMPS-Hurricane?
ryan: the SSTs are probably some of the lowest seen to support a Category 4 hurricane. I suspect the largest positive influence on the MPI would be the stratospheric temperatures much cooler than seen elsewhere in the tropics.
I work on 5-7 day predictability issues with NOGAPS and comparisons with other NWP models like ECMWF and GFS.
Much worse than I ever thought. I’m surprised that 2/3 of the previous occurances were back in the 1950’s. Had Globull Warnings kicked in by then? If not, what caused this event in the 1950’s? And do we know if this happened at all in the 1450’s, or 1350’s or even 1250’s?
That would make for an interesting satellite loop.
So I was wrong about a (complete) lull in hurricane production from Sept 3rd through the 20th, (crow are fattening up in the cage) But what about the possibility of a continued increased surge in strong hurricane production after the 21st? (If what we have now is a slowdown from the max potential?)
I am still awaiting the rest of the season, popcorn and BBQ crow in hand, [Is KFC an acceptable substitute, if this goes on a long time?];)
Ryan talks about the cold surge post Igor as the moon goes from Maximum South to across the equator, and the air pumped into the arctic, sends down the air mass parked there now, into your gardens.
As for the coming winter in the USA, I have data base for that, you might want of look at the analog forecast on my site, click on the calendar icon and fast fwd up to November, then select Lows (or snowfall) then rapidly scan forward by [next] days for several months through the winters of 2010-11, 2011-12, and 2012-13, for S&Grins.
Not too late to place your cities road salt orders yet?
Ref – maksimovich says:
September 15, 2010 at 12:23 am
“In the SH the Polar front jet has meandered up to around 40s a big antarctic blast into the mid latitudes.
http://squall.sfsu.edu/gif/jetstream_sohem_00.gif
ryan: “just wait for the Arctic blast behind Igor during the next 5-7 days over the Northern half of the US and Canada. Time to harvest your tomatoes…”
___________________________
Sounds like glacial periods are fraught with hurricanes sucking the jets toward the equator, dumping scads of precip all over the place and making glaciers advance toward NYC and Rio. Is this the beginning of the end? For some reason, I guess it was all that ice, I thought glacial periods had more hurricanes that we do now. Cold AND windy AND wet! Hummmmm……
Arctic blast? It’s been close to being an “unprecedentedly” cold summer in San Francisco now we’re going to freeze? I’m stocking up on “robust” long underwear along with an “unprecedentedly” warm down jacket. Damn global warming. I suppose next summer I’ll have to the heater on.
[ryan: tell me about it. i am expecting polar bears to be infiltrating Monterey Bay this winter]