Hurricane Irene not packing much of a "punch" so far

I haven’t been able to find any weather stations that survived the power outage when the storm came ashore near Beaufort, NC. So I’m not sure we can say there weren’t hurricane force winds when first landfall was achieved.
toms, when they are in the tropics, it’s not uncommon for them to be lightning free until the eye makes landfall (cheekily stealing a reference sent to me by a colleague):
See Shao et al., Eos, 86, 42, 18 Oct. 2005

TedK @ur momisugly August 27, 2011 at 5:50 pm
Few here take storms very lightly, and many in fact have been relieved to see that Irene has turned out to have been a lot less damaging than expected. The problem isn’t that authorities have been zealous in making sure folks are informed and prepared for any eventuality. Every effort should be made to ensure that people fully understand the danger and that they take the appropriate steps. I applaud the actions of some meteorologists and virtually all emergency personnel in doing their jobs very effectively. (Except for that New Jersey(?) chief of police that made those first comments about toe-tags yesterday. He needs to be run out of town on a rail. Grandstanding jackass.) Rather, this is a case of the media and their political masters going so far beyond what was necessary and warranted that it beggars description. I would suggest that they have intentionally frightened people for reasons other than public safety. This is clearly a case of partisan politics dictating the actions of politicians, and money and “access” dictating the actions of the media. I don’t believe these folks had the public’s safety even remotely in mind.

Brad: I don’t know whether you were commenting to me or Anthony because your comment was right below mine. But I based my comment solely on my observations, my being in New York when Gloria hit, and the meteorology classes I have taken, they have nothing to do with anything Anthony said.
I happen to think that high-rise building today are almost certainly better designed to withstand high winds now than they were in 1985. It is always possible that due to a design flaw there might be a building that can’t survive these winds but it is highly unlikely, and as I native New Yorker I can tell you that New York gets quite high winds on a regular bases.

@frank K. I think if you read my blog you’ll see that I am fully aware of New England Hurricanes…and Hurricanes in general. Check back to the 2011 North Atlantic Hurricane Season forecast from June (if interested). However being a young meteorologist I cannot remember living through Bob and neither can any people my age, so to us a New England hurricane really is unusual. If history is an indication this will be the first in a multi-year cycle of Hurricanes threatening the region and by 2025 (give or take) my generation will be use to the storms.

Anthony and I said:

What do climate change deniers and hurricane deniers have in common?
REPLY: LOL! In case you can’t read (and it appears you can’t) the title of the post in fact has “hurricane” in it. So, go ahead, make my day, try to show we are denying a hurricane exists. Chortle – A

The comment was tongue in cheek and aimed not at you (I’m on your side in all of this) but at a good number of posters here who clearly are in a state of denial regarding the bona fides of Irene. I could see by the track and the storm density it was going to fade fast when it made land fall. I doubt has the heart to reform again over water and suspect it will blow itself out over the next several days. I also agree it was over-hyped and I understand why (Katrina – good job, Brownie), but I was always more concerned about wind damage even at TS speeds, and the inevitable storm surge. So yes, this storm evolved per my estimates, but is and remains dangerous in those areas that are vulnerable to TS intensities and storm surge. That includes a lot of low lying, old growth areas and is not a trivial area. The 650 mb core pressure was more than adequate to drag in a lot of ocean into Chesapeake Bay, were it to hold.
It was actually Steven Goddard that made the worst claims and was as you know, listed by Drudge as a scientist who is mocking the hurricane classification, and he has a good many like-minded posters there who are also posting here with the same disregard for the danger remaining in Irene. As you and I agree that was way over the top. And I remain skeptical of the WU reporting station quality, and as any good critical thinking person should be. Trust but verify.

Ric Werme says:
August 27, 2011 at 5:44 pm
Theo Goodwin says:
August 27, 2011 at 4:26 pm
Using the “size” of a storm to hype the storm is unprofessional. The size of the storm as it appears on a satellite photo has nothing to do with the speed of its winds near the center.
“Size is an important attribute, so is wind speed, water content time of landfall (both day/night and lowtide/hightide), population density, topography, novelty, and so on.”
I do not understand. Back in the 1990s, Floyd’s clouds covered the entire state of Florida yet the damage from Floyd was tiny. How can you say that the size of the cloud system viewed from space is related to the storm’s damage?

Originating from Forbes.com:
http://news.yahoo.com/real-hurricane-irene-renamed-hurricane-hype-021402485.html
Get Real: Hurricane Irene Should Be Renamed “Hurricane Hype”
By Patrick Michaels | Forbes – Fri, Aug 26, 2011

Over the years the National Hurricane Center (NHC) has employed the world’s best experts on Atlantic tropical cyclones, from “Dr. Bob” Simpson, to the mediagenic Neil Frank and on to the current director, Bill Read.
The lifesaver-in-chief was probably Frank, who indefatigably crisscrossed the nation educating the public to the dangers—hidden and obvious—that accompany these curiously seductive weather systems. His era was one of many innovations, including extensive use of satellites, and tailoring the “names” of storms to the culture where they roam in order to attract attention.
One of Frank’s nightmare scenarios goes like this: A strong hurricane threatens a heavily-populated resort area with few escape routes, such as the North Carolina Outer Banks. Vacationers reluctantly abandon their $20,000/week palaces on Pine Island for 36 hours in an immobile SUV conga line, drenching tropical showers, and no toilets. The storm falls apart or unexpectedly turns away from land. Lotsa folks rent for more than a week, so they return, an equally strong storm shows up, and they don’t leave. The title of this movie is “how to die in a 10,000 square foot house-boat”.
We have just lived through something pretty close to this nightmare. Last April 27, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 41 died because they disregarded a weather warning.
While the number of strong tornadoes is hardly changing (there may even be a slight decline), the number of tornado warnings has increased exponentially as Doppler radar picks up twisting circulations embedded in thunderstorms that could produce a ground tornado.
The number of false positives has so cheapened the currency of tornado warnings that few now bother to interrupt their work when one is given. While the very good forecasters at the National Weather Service were not at all happy when veteran TV meteorologist James Spann blamed a large number of Tuscaloosa deaths on the very high false alarm rates, he had a point.
Now on to Hurricane Irene:
Up until now (Friday evening) Irene has been very similar to 1985 hurricane Gloria, though a bit weaker. But the level of hype—because of its projected path near all of the I-95 major cities—is similar to that of 26 years ago.
(…)
When Gloria didn’t kill enough people to suit CBS’s Dan Rather—a serial hurricane hyper who made his career on 1961 Hurricane Carla—he yelled at poor Neil Frank on live TV.
(…)
As I complete this, there’s another tropical depression out in the Atlantic, and a couple more on the way in the very near future. Suppose one of these takes a similar path, except that it improbably threads the needle of the Mid-Atlantic Bight and makes landfall immediately to the west of New York City as a Category 3 storm. How many people will the hyping of Irene have killed?
That’s how Hurricane Hype followed by Hurricane Insanity leads to hurricane death.
(…)

===
Looks like Obama will have several opportunities to be in charge at the NHC.
Welcome to the “Stealth Stimulus” method. There’s a lot of panic buying, lots of stocking up, even many “one time” purchases of items like generators, gas cans, and inflatable boats. So next month the administration can gleefully point to the increased August GDP numbers as a sign of the continuing recovery and the success of the President’s policies.
Let’s see how many more “natural emergencies” pop up before the next presidential election. ☺

I only wish we could take some of that rain from Irene (without the high winds, please) and transfer it here. We can still use it, we need it badly. More intense water rationing has started in the Dallas/Fort Worth area now. Maybe we should start hyping up the drought down here in Texas, speaking of whether it is a good thing to hype up the potential hurricanes and tornadoes so much. For me personally, I’d rather put up with some of the hype (not all of it – the boy-who-cried-wolf syndrome comes to mind) than to be caught unaware of a coming storm.

j ferguson said on August 28, 2011 at 3:42 am:

Guy next to O is head of Fema. Napolitano doesn’t wear glasses.

Really? The pic here must show a transparent alien life form stuck to her face:
http://standing-firm.com/2009/04/24/j-nap-attack-why-antis-want-napolitano-out-and-why-they-are-wrong/
To be fair, although she needs some level of vision correction (unless she got Lasik recently), apparently normally she wears contacts. Ah, vanity!

Correction. Meant to say:
Would RATHER have a little bit of risk and freedom…and deal with that risk when it happens…than with the totalitarian Bloomberg “historic” evacuations.