Don’t Underestimate a Cat. 1
State College, Pa. — 29 August 2012 — AccuWeather.com reports before pummeling Florida and the Gulf Coast of the U.S. with flooding rain, Isaac first became organized more than a thousand miles east of the Leeward Islands over the Atlantic.
Here’s the interesting stats:
Distance Traveled
From forming into the ninth tropical depression of the 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2012, to churning over southern Louisiana Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2012, Isaac has traveled about 2,695 miles.
High Wind Gusts Recorded
Louisiana
Belle Chasse Ferry Dock in Plaquemines Parish: 113 mph
Miss Canyon Oil Rig: 102 mph
Boothville: 84 mph
New Orleans (NAS/Alvin Callendar Airport): 79 mph
Mississippi
Gulfport: 70 mph
Biloxi: 55 mph
Excessive Rainfall Amounts
Florida
Royal Palm Beach: 15.86 inches
Boynton Beach: 13.74 inches
Greenacres: 13.10 inches
Wellington: 12.55 inches
Louisiana
New Orleans: 9.57 inches
Boothville, La.: 6.65 inches
South Lafourche Airport: 4.89 inches
Slidell, La.: 3.60 inches
Mississippi
Pascagoula: 5.35 inches
Gulfport: 4.14 inches
Hattiesburg: 3.32 inches
Biloxi: 2.16 inches
Storm Surge Heights
Louisiana
Shell Beach: Between 9 and 11 feet
Lake Pontchartrain at New Orleans: Around 6 feet
Grand Isle: Around 5 feet
Mississippi
Pascagoula: Around 4 feet
Alabama
Mobile Bay: Around 3-5 feet
Severe Weather Spawned by Isaac
Lyman, Miss.
At 12:13 p.m. CDT Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2012, trained spotters reported a tornado 9 miles southwest of Lyman, Miss., near Long Beach.
Tampa, Fla.
A waterspout moved onshore on Monday, Aug. 27, 2012, damaging six homes 2 miles east-southeast of Tampa, Fla. Fences, trees and roofs were damaged on the properties.
Vero Beach, Fla.
An EF-0 tornado touched down on Monday, Aug. 27, 2012, impacting Vero Palm Estates, Countryside Mobile Home Park and Paraside Park Lifting about 5 miles west of Vero Beach. The tornado produced a discontinuous damage path, including minor damage to 62 structures and major damage to 31 structures.
By Meghan Evans, Meteorologist for AccuWeather.com
Maybe too late for our farmers this season, but it does alleviate the drought.
Looks like an almost stationary system now. Those rain totals for LA should meet and even exceed those in FL by tomorrow. Looks like it might be trying to go W instead of N. Probably wobbling. Bad news for an area that can’t handle the high rain totals too well.
That would be Tropical Storm Isaac now…
Climate satire?
Anthony, do you think that the Isaac did not intensify as much as Katrina did with roughly the same track in part due to the decreased raft of fresh water floating around the Mississippi delta as a result of the Midwest drought?
UnfrozenCavemanMD says:
August 29, 2012 at 1:08 pm
Hurricanes gain intensity over fresh water as reported here last week. So you could well be right.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/14/texas-am-says-freshwater-hurricanes-grow-stronger/
Come to Kansas City, Isaac, we need you. Leave poor New Orleans alone.
Many, many years, long before Katrinia, John McPhee wrote a book, The Control of Nature, with a chapter about the Army Corps of Engineers silliness about diverting the Mississippi River, saving New Orleans.
Sadly, New Orleans — my most favorite city in the US — is dead. Before silliness, after Katrinia, now…? I wish New Orleans could be saved, but it is human arrogance to think so.
….Lady in Red
I don’t like the movement on this storm! It looks almost like it is trying to drift back southwest to go back into the Gulf. I hope that is just a temporary pause in its forward momentum or my eyes following the eye wrong. I really hate it when these storms get all wobbly near the coast, they sometimes decide to get back to an area where they can strengthen again. I can’t imagine it cooled the water too much as fast as it went through the first time. I remember a couple of storms back in the 80’s where we evacuated three different times because the storm kept changing its mind (guiding winds died in the northern Gulf and it just sort of circled around for a few days – luckily as I recall it kept going back over water it had already cooled so didn’t strengthen much.)
UnfrozenCavemanMD
August 29, 2012 at 1:08 pm
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If you do a bit of research, I think you will find that Issac kept sucking up dry air which disrupted its ability to organize. Kind like me in the morning before warm humid coffee.
Lady in Red:
More coherence, please.
Lady in Red, thank you for that reminder. That book, McPhee’s ‘Control of Nature’, is a remarkable book about geology and engineering. It also has an eye opening section on the Los Angeles basin, and the mudslides that afflict that area cyclically. How the catch basins were built after flooding, then sat dormant for decades, then overflowed again and were rebuilt larger… left to fill with rocks and mud and not cleaned up. Politically, who spends money on catch basins that might not be needed for years? Then another thirty or so years later, they fill and overflow again, and the houses have been built even farther up the mountain sides, the devastation is even worse, etc. Growing up there, it brought home a sharp reminder of what happens when those thirty year floods happen. Going to go and read it again!
Reportedly, a short spin up tornado got a building over in Milton Florida. My phone went nuts with the alert and looking at the Doppler, it traveled roughly up the Escambia river and crossed North of Molino Florida. Dunno if it was on the ground or if the reported damage in Milton was as reported.
Thank you, Joanie.
New Orleans *is* my favorite US city, but like parents, we can do no more than cry, when the grandparents die…..
Human are too damn arrogant about what they can change, control. New Orleans is global climate change writ small: one small sad dead city…. if not today, by the Mississippi, tomorrow.
….Lady in Red
Here are my latest thoughts regarding Isaac from here on out: http://meteorologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2012/08/last-forecast-update-on-ts-isaac.html
UnfrozenCavemanMD says:
August 29, 2012 at 1:08 pm
Anthony, do you think that the Isaac did not intensify as much as Katrina did with roughly the same track in part due to the decreased raft of fresh water floating around the Mississippi delta as a result of the Midwest drought?
Katrina reached Cat 5 a long way out then began to peter out.
http://vortex.plymouth.edu/hur_dir/2005/atl_12_katrina05_pos
National weather service data do not show anywhere near those wind gust speeds on land.
The only sustained hurricane speeds were off-shore.
Highest sustained wind speed of 58 mph at South Lafourche Airport late on the 28th with gust speeds of 77 mph. Nowhere near hurricane.
http://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KGAO.html
I’ve seen no sustained land speeds over 58 mph, if you can find any let me know.
The gators in the swamp are happy! The so-called “red wolves” were removed from the swamps along the Louisiana Texas coastal region in the 1970’s to North Carolina to be stocked along the eastern Atlantic states most likely to protect them from the rapid increase in gators as a result of protection under the Endangered Species Act. Now the eastern states are over run with these “coyote-grey wolf ” hybrids but are called “coyotes” where they are a serious problem. Millions of dollars are still being spent on this program even today even though DNA analysis proves there is no unique genetic make-up. There was originally was about 400 captured along the Louisiana and Texas coast to begin this program and continues today. Your tax dollars at work. Grant seekers? You better believe it.
But the gators are happy. No one else is.
I think the NWS is continuing to fudge the hurricane numbers. When they downgraded it to a TS, the reason was that the gusts had dipped below 75mph. The problem is that hurricanes are defined by their sustained wind speeds, and not the gusts. Am I missing something here?
Can anyone here define objectively a drought for me, please? I asked my local retired meteorologist and he said “an extended period of abnormally low rainfall.”
He and I occasionally discuss building a non-weighing lysimeter or an evaporation pan. I’m interested in the lysimeter to indicate Ixodes tick dessication. I’m interested in the pan evaporator for the reported decline in pan evaporation rates.
Index map to tidal gauges in S. Miss: Pascagoula River and Gulf Drainage Basins
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/lmrfc/?n=pascagoulariverandgulfdrainagebasins
Major Flood Stage: Jourdan River at KILN
http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=lix&gage=klnm6
Snapshot at 120829.14:55 CDT http://i47.tinypic.com/10p6ba1.png
The TV just told me about New Orleans:
Behind the multi-billion dollar new levee system with the massive pumps: Safe.
In the rural areas behind the old earthen levees: Flooded.
Now we know what all that federal money saved: The Tourism Trade.
BW is on to something. The weather station results for Slidell, and Gulfprot/Biloxi show winds nowhere close to 75 mph sustained in the recent 3 days. On what data / observations is Nat Hurricane Svc announcements made?
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-08-28/us/us_tropical-storm-isaac_1_tropical-storm-conditions-national-hurricane-center-hurricane-isaac
As of 4pm wednesday – aug 29 NHC
BULLETIN
TROPICAL STORM ISAAC ADVISORY NUMBER 35
NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL092012
400 PM CDT WED AUG 29 2012
SUMMARY OF 400 PM CDT…2100 UTC…INFORMATION
———————————————-
LOCATION…30.0N 91.1W
ABOUT 35 MI…60 KM S OF BATON ROUGE LOUISIANA
ABOUT 60 MI…95 KM W OF NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS…70 MPH…110 KM/H
Morgan City, LA, 30 miles south of Baton Rouge, as noted in the NHC update, notes gusts up to 54 MPH…
http://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KPTN.html
The definition of a hurricane does not depend upon the fastest gust to be found at 20,000 feet. I cannot find the specifications for measuring sustained winds to rate hurricanes and tropical storms.
What’s Isaac trying to do, crawl along the coast and sneak into Texas? Still seems to be tracking more W by N though most everyone keeps saying it will soon hook to the north, and to the north it is bound to take even if it waits until the Gulf’s corner.
bw says:
August 29, 2012 at 3:06 pm
I’ve monitored the NDBC observation stations and only saw 2 with sustained wind speed above hurricane force, but those were at 97.5m (LOPL1, Louisiana Offshore Oil Port Oil Platform) & ~130m (KMDJ, MIssissippi Canyon 311A (Apache Corp) Oil Platform).
NOAA adjusts those raw values to a 10m height. “NDBC adjusts wind speeds to conform to the universally accepted reference standard of 10 meters.”- NOAA
The raw LOPL1 high value of 72.1 knots adjusts down to 56.1 knots or 64.5 mph.
The raw KMDJ high value of 75 knots adjusts down to 56.6 knots or 65.0 mph.
As you said, all of the land stations showed values less than the offshore stations. So I’ve seen no documented hurricane force winds (at the ref std 10m) from Isaac from the NDBC coastal stations that were designed to measure winds that hit the coast.
@LastDemocrat The winds were above 70 mph sustained off the coast. The friction of the land mass was enough to keep the sustained winds below hurricane force in this case.
What do you mean by “not to underestimate a cat 1, a comment which goes against the usual coverage of the current storm, and your previous comments.
By the way, I noticed that you still had nothing to say about the Arctic ice area, extent or volume. Please don’t refer me to the situation in the Antatctic region, It’s winter there, I know.
eyesonu
August 29, 2012 at 3:15 pm
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Wrong. C. rufus is NOT C.lupus x C. latrans. The only study that came to that conclusion was severely flawed because of the C. lupus baseline. Animals that were included as C. lupus were not. On the other hand, C.rufus is most likely not unique but just one of an inter grade of native North American wolves that were here before the main C. lupus migration in the mid Rancholebrean. Despite all the lefty cater-wailing, C.lupus rarely ever mates with C.latrans and vis versa. One more thing, those early DNA studies were done when the technology and science for doing such things was in its infancy. Most resent studies are actually not particularly focused on C.rufus ( which should be called C. lycaon as it has precedence), but rather on the genus Canis in general.
Dunno, this is data that I snagged last night. Offshore, yes, hurricane strength. Onshore? Nah.
http://i45.tinypic.com/2vjvjg7.png
Measured at 10m off the coast? How?
Mike Smith says:
“August 29, 2012 at 4:16 pm
The winds were above 70 mph sustained off the coast.”
“Measured at 10m off the coast? How?”
Technology has advanced. We now have instrumentation offshore.
So, we continue on with no hurricane making continental landfall on U.S. since what – Ike?
GeoLurking says:
August 29, 2012 at 5:10 pm
Dunno, this is data that I snagged last night. Offshore, yes, hurricane strength. Onshore? Nah.
The highest NDBC station measured value in your chart was BURL1 with a 76.0 mph value. This agrees with the 5-day history NOAA chart (http://1.usa.gov/Q2M1Vs) which shows a max value of 66 knots, which converts to 76 mph. The anemometer on BURL1 is at 30.5m above sea level. Adjusting this value to the ‘universal standard height’ of 10m gives a wind speed of 67 mph. I still haven’t seen a single hurricane strength 10m value from any official NDBC station. If you find one, post it please. This is the same thing I observed last year for Irene. It was definitely hurricane strength offshore, but no NDBC coastal stations reported hurricane strength sustained wind speeds; close yes, but not over 74mph.
.RE…Lady in Red says:
August 29, 2012 at 1:48 pm
……Army Corps of Engineers silliness about diverting the Mississippi River, saving New Orleans…..I wish New Orleans could be saved, but it is human arrogance to think so.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re all doomed. So were the Dutch. But they’ve put it off hundreds of years with their dikes. And they will do their best to postpone doom a couple of hundred years more.
What is the alternative? To allow the Mississippi to shortcut to the sea in the channel of what is now called the Atchafalaya River? That would involve moving an entire port hundreds of miles, to an equally swampy place. Care to draw up the plans? Please include the cost.
Somewhere between thirty and forty percent of our imports and exports move through the “doomed” city of New Orleans. Not all is on boats, either. There is an entire web of pipelines to the port and away from the port. The world’s best refineries are inland from that port. The refineries are so good that it pays to bring raw crude all the way here, refine it, and then export it. Are you suggesting that entire infrastructure be torn down and moved?
Who is to blame for the fact the delta used to grow, and now shrinks? The “silly” engineers? Or perhaps the “silly” farmers. They used to farm in a manner that allowed a lot of soil erosion, but they have learned that is unwise. In the same time frame the amount of dirt dumped by the Mississippi into the Gulf has dwindled from 406 million tons a year to an estimated 145 million tons a year. So perhaps farmers were responsible for the fact the delta used to grow so fast, and are responsible for the fact it is now shrinking. Therefore the problem can be solved if you simply stop eating?
New Orleans does face problems. However all mankind faces problems, no matter where it goes or what it does. I know this for a fact, for I spent a lot of my youth attempting to avoid problems. My conclusion is: Can’t be done.
In the end the mature thing to do is to identify the problems, and then solve them.
With the info from bw and oldone, I hunted around for data.
Here is a listing of weather readings for the recent few days for a bunch of weather bouys. Apparently, we have two types at the
National Data Bouy Center: “moored bouy” and C-MAN” station.
per this link, left hand column of data.
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/BUOY/
That link has a map in the center. Blue circles are “moored bouys” and red triangles are “C-MAn stations.”
Bouy info at this link:
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/cman.php
“C-MAN stations have been installed on lighthouses, at capes and beaches, on near shore islands, and on offshore platforms…”
At the map on this site:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/BUOY/
no, this one – i haven’t figured out that one yet.
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/
You focus in on the location where you want data, and float the cursor ove the bouy or c-mam station of interest, and get the name of the bouy to appear / pop up.
For example, ” LOPL1″ is a bouy that looks like Isaac should have tore it up – just west of the most extended part of louisiana peninsula / just west of plaquamine parish, just south of galiano.
Go here to retrieve the readings of wind speed of that bouy.
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/data/derived2/
the ‘derived2’ in the name means that a standard formula has been applied to the measured wind speed to calculate wind at ten meters and 20 meters above sea level / ground level.
scroll down the list of stations until you find the bouy you identified as interesting. I am looking at ‘LOPL1’, Louisiana Oil Platform 1.
10 meters and 20 meters are standard reference heights. Calculation info here:
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/adjust_wind.shtml
these two data columns, for estimated 10meter high wind speed and 20 meter high wind speed, are obvious when you click on the bouy of interest. the remaining data in each row are obvious: date and time.
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/datfl.shtml
LOPL1 is on the list – clicking it gets you here:
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/data/derived2/LOPL1.dmv
‘wspd10’ is the converted value yielding the number you would use to gauge storm strength to see if there are hurricane force winds.
The metric is ‘meters per second.’
if you put ‘meters per second’ in google, a choice will pop up offering to convert this to miles per hour.
pick any m/s data point you want – they are in whole numbers – and convert to mph.
the highest m/s for this bouy, as isaac rolled in, was 30, at 2012 08 29 10 45 am.
that translates to 67.1 mph. nowhere near 75mph of a hurricane.
so, you can hunt around for these bouys, and try to find one just offshore that had a 75 mph reading.
i don’t know where the hurricane people got data, but i would feel pretty comfortable gauging fishing prospects on this data set.
There is a satellite that measures wind speeds over the oceans. It is called QuickScat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuikSCAT
DesertYote says:
August 29, 2012 at 4:56 pm
==================
Please provide links/references. I have looked closely at this and would like to review your claims/points.
Mike Smith says:
August 29, 2012 at 7:59 pm
================
I will go with data recorded from buoys qualified sources and not a satellite trying to “see” through a tropical storm. We have seen enough “interpretations”. Look at Shell Beach, LA. No land or trees to effect measurements. There were no reliable recorded hurricane wind speeds per the definition of a hurricane that I have been able to find. Not even close.
@ OldOne -> August 29, 2012 at 6:44 pm
Thank You!
Mike Smith says:
August 29, 2012 at 7:59 pm
“QuikSCAT, however, continued to operate for a decade and stopped working circa 23 November 2009, when the bearings in the motor of the spinning antenna failed.”
NOAA Radar Observed Precipiation. http://water.weather.gov/precip/
Snapshot, Louisiana, 24 hour as of 8/29/12 23:40 UTC
6 to 10 inches rain in New Oleans area.
http://i49.tinypic.com/11v18io.png
The NOAA have a number of hurricane hunter aircraft which carry highly accurate stepped Frequency Microwave Radiometer (SFMR) instruments which measure surface wind speeds. These aircraft were constantly measuring this storm up to and as it made landfall and measured surface winds above hurricane status prior to and during landfall. In this case however it is not the storms winds which are going to be the source of most of its damage, its the aree and angle of coast it hit and the rain and storm surge it carried as a result of its stall just off the coast. It basically propped just offshore thereby avoiding losing intensity and drove storm surge up the Mississipi and other coastal rivers whilst simultaneously vacuuming water out of the ocean dumping it onto the same area already being inundated with storm surge.. It is the flooding which is the cause of this storms damage and that is the reason why discounting storms on the basis of their wind speed (S-S category) alone can get people into a lot of trouble as is occurring here.
Well now we know that ‘good job Brownie’ did make a much better swimming pool, and his walls held up. I believe I heard a radio news broadcast, that said the water in NO did get deeper than with Katrina, where the walls of the pool fell down.
So now how much deeper do they want to build this pool, before they get the message that ANY hurricane or tropical storm, will go right over the walls,no matter how high they build them. This solution is on a par with drilling a hole in the bottom of a boat, to let the water coming in from another hole, go back out.
And the good people who moved to the higher land on the other side of the back yard lake, apparently noticed that the poor people who live in the deep end of the pool, couldn’t do anything about it.
Isaac, cut loose and go north bud. We need a soaking up north, like we needed a major cold snap in February or March that we didn’t get. Don’t pit stop. North, go north. The south doesn’t need flood, they’ve been doing alright on rain this summer. Some of my swimming holes down there had too much water. One is so vegetated it’s too much to hack in with a machete.
One more odd thing I sure am noticing is how it’s getting chilly at night away from the deep south. Low water vapor, the heat escapes, like the desert. Like turning into deserts.
Now I’m starting to fret.
I said we’d get a dust bowl, but I was thinking in 5 years.
Comments by oldone on adjusting wind speeds to 10 meter height look correct to me. This also applies to the LOPL1 data which I had seen earlier and did not account for the height adjustments. I was only scanning for max sustained speeds. Also, I’ve been watching local WLW and WVUE TV reporting. The damage reports are dominated by storm surge and flooding that looks to be mostly due to unexpected rain intensity and duration. Video of damage around the area shows very little wind damage, mostly some downed trees. Anecdotal reports by residents concur that damage from wind alone is less than expected.
It should be noted that the definition of “Hurricane” seems to be sustained surface wind at 10 meter heights using 1 minute periods. I’ve still seen NO data at all that supports calling Isaac a category 1 hurricane at landfall or anytime after landfall. Read all of the NHC/NOAA advisory and discussions. They declared Isaac at cat1 based on aircraft observations. Doing some research on how surface winds are estimated from aircraft I’d say that Isaac was not a typical storm for reliable surface guesses from aircraft. This is after reading the 1990 paper by Mark Powell and Peter Black that describes the science underlying aircraft estimates. The paper is “The relationship of hurricane reconnaissance flight-level wind measurements to winds measured by NOAA’s oceanic platforms” J.Wind Engineer. Indust. Aerodyn., 36, 381-392. There is also a later paper http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008WAF2007087.1
The wiki page also has some info on this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffir%E2%80%93Simpson_Hurricane_Scale
Claims of Isaac severity and calling it a hurricane instead of a tropical storm may have some later bearing on the larger global warming assertions of greater human expenses due to extreme weather events. Not to mention the simple importance of how observed historical facts clash with re-writing of history to support politcal activism based on fantasy. Some day the wind speed data may end up being “homogenized” and no one will ever know the truth of what really occurred
Best of wishes to those in Louisiana who could do without the hosing.
Looks like system 98L is soon to become Leslie and could be a Cat 3 / Cat 4 botherer. Should stay out over the water for all of its useful life, but a bit of westward drift in the longer-range forecasts isn’t exactly unheard-of. One for Nova Scotia and perhaps Maine to keep an eye on but certainly not panic over.
Looks to me this morning as tho Isaac will bring far more benefit (rain in the drought area) to a much larger part of the country, than any minor hardship to a very small area. I think we should all give Isaac an attaboy!
I am with BW on this one, as well as those noting the damage coming from heavy rainfall – a couple wks ago, I was helping a family member with flooding aftermath, from a flood totally devoid of hurricane connection. Yes, flooding happens. As someone noted, Allison created terrible flooding problems despite low storm rating.
The issue for people in NO and that part of gulf coast is dealing with yet another flood.
The issue for the world is whether this storm gets used for propaganda, like Irene did. Everyday people mostly do not know and would never pursue bouy data like us geeks reading WUWT.
So, their data source is whatever the propagandists say.
The C-MAN station data should be very compelling to us – actual wind msmt at 20 meters should really tell us what is coming ashore in terms of how much debris will be flying and how likely it is that materials will be peeled off of structures, and trees pulled down by combo of wind and wet soil.
A tree will fall in wet soil with almost no wind, if the ground is wet enough.
We want to know whether CO2 is causing the planet to hold more energy in the atmosphere, leading to more convection and so on. Makes sense intuitively, and when the idea is floated out there, then we see a hurriance elsewhere and hear that it was a raging hurricane, what do we know?
Couldn’t this bouy stuff be a great science class project? Middle school kids could learn skepticism and hypothesis testing, and get to click on the bouy data, pull it into excel, chart it, and write up little kid-sience reports. It is that basic.
This is why the govt wants the fairness doctrine back – we who have already gotten thru school a while ago actually learned science, so we are danerous to the totalitarians. Kids these days will have no clue as they grow up under these totalitarians.
And the Cat 3+ lack of CONUS landfall record continues unabated. I wonder if it qualifies for the ‘unprecedented’ moniker now?
NOAA Radar Observed Precipiation. http://water.weather.gov/precip/
Snapshot, Louisiana, 24 hour valid as of 8/30/2012 12:00 UTC (7 am CDT)
White area over New Orleans is 10+ (10-15) inches.
http://i45.tinypic.com/2lxvvc1.png
Snapshot: Louisiana – 7 Day Cumulative, valid as of 8/30/2012 12:00 UTC (7 am CDT)
http://i47.tinypic.com/212tkpf.png
@ thelastdemocrat says:
August 29, 2012 at 6:09 pm
So, we continue on with no hurricane making continental landfall on U.S. since what – Ike?
=======================================================================
I think it was Irene in 2011?
Hey, Isaac, c’mon up north! KC BBQ is great, and I hear that Oklahoma Joe’s burnt ends are to die for. You can hang out and rain all you want up here while you treat yourself to some good Q, buddy. Don’t delay. We need the rain.
eyesonu
August 29, 2012 at 9:13 pm
DesertYote says:
August 29, 2012 at 4:56 pm
###
Sure, I am at work now and don’t have access to my library. I won’t be at home until around 1900 Pacific time, but I do have a link to an excellent paper by an author, Nowak, who used to be on the hybrid side of the fence ( I have been following this issue for 20 years myself). If I find the time I will try to google it.
Lady tn Red: your reference to McPhee ‘s book concerning harnassing the Mississippi River is incorrect. The Corps has spent billions on structures designed to prevent the natural change of course into the channel of the Aatchafalya River. So far, it works somewhat, but the force of theriver’s current is undermining the structures. If theMississippi does change course, which seems likely, New Orleans will become high and dry.
McPhee’s point is that every time we play God with nature we usually fail and screw things up royally.
eyesonu
August 29, 2012 at 9:13 pm
DesertYote says:
August 29, 2012 at 4:56 pm
###
My morning SCRUM meeting was canceled, YAY! I did a quick google and got the following. It does not appear to be the complete paper, but its more then a stupid press release.
http://wolfology1.tripod.com/id229.htm
I just remembered the main author of an other study that was interesting, Wilson. I’ll see if I can scare that one up and find the complete Nowak paper.
Not even. Willis had a post around that time, looking at recorded surface winds at landfall. It was a tropical storm by then. Here in New Jersey, we hardly noticed the winds as different than any other storm front.
I watch pics of flooded areas. Sad.
I like(d) New Orleans, A great city. Frankly I’m scared to return, post-Katrina, a different city. Not “my” New Orleans….
I’m just sad about our silly arrogance. And the folk who live the lie. ….Lady in Red
Oh Kay, think again. Irene was a tropical storm at landfall at NC and was never anything more from there. We are only told it was a hurricane in the days leading up to landfall. Landfall let us mere mortals in on the action. Political hype resulted in the distrust on NHC reports to this day. The truth is the best option.
DesertYote says:
August 30, 2012 at 8:18 am
=================
I look forward to reviewing any info you provide.
One primary point I make is: Why the need to relocate the so-called “red wolves” from a place where they existed for historical time frames? They were captured and then declared extinct in the wild. That was a man-made issue. Why?
Happy alligators? Unintended consequences? Simply grant seeking? All of the above!
Anyway I sure the ‘gators loved Isaac.
Do you think NO could hang onto Isaac and just send a bit north each day, say for a week? Current forecast has center passing over my East Central IL location and forecast of 10 inch rain. That much at once doesn’t help a drought, and I have a finished basement :<
eyesonu
August 30, 2012 at 10:27 am
DesertYote says:
August 30, 2012 at 8:18 am
=================
One primary point I make is: Why the need to relocate the so-called “red wolves” from a place where they existed for historical time frames? They were captured and then declared extinct in the wild. That was a man-made issue. Why?
Happy alligators? Unintended consequences? Simply grant seeking? All of the above!
Anyway I sure the ‘gators loved Isaac.
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You can bet it was for political and not scientific reasons!
I don’t want to hyjack this thread, but if you do some research you will find that the envirowacko lefties were using “Red Wolf” populations as a means of controlling territory ( BTW, they do not like the C.lycaon theory one bit as it would[should] invalidate the current listing of the fictitious C. rufus, thus destroying their carefully constructed plans). They would have certainly had some Marxist scheme in mind when they did it. I remember that once the US Navy agreed to host a small population only to have the Watermelons trying to tell them afterwards, that they had to stop holding training exorcizes because it might upset the wolves.
The science of carnivore evolution is hard enough without it being polluted with politics. E.g. recent work shows that my closest extent relative is C. aureus! Did the ancestor of C. latrans evolve in the Old World? Was there a holarctic progenitor species related to edwardii? Inquiring mind want to know.
Hurricanes are deadly forces, but they are also quite beautiful in their own way. Have you ever walked around in the eye of a hurricane? When I was younger I had the chance to do this during a category 4 hurricane (Keith) and it was so surreal, it was like someone hit the pause button on the environment around me.
NOAA has been fudging wind data for years. Look at many of the storms and see if you find official observations of winds as high as they say. All of a sudden, they decide to take a super-strict definition approach with Isaac? As Joe Bastardi, said this would have been a 2/3 in the past. The idea that a 965mb low is a TS is crazy. NOAA wanted people to think this was a TS/borderline cat 1 so when the damage is much worse than a usual storm of that intensity, they can point to CAGW.
DesertYote says:
August 30, 2012 at 1:10 pm
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This is the last post on the topic this week. You are right as far as diverting the comments OT. Please check back early next week when this thread has died down and perhaps the mods will allow it to proceed. This is a topic I have a very strong interest in. Many others may also.
Sorry mods, but issues with the Louisiana – Texas coastal regions wont let me forget about the OT issue discussed with DesertYote.
The ‘gators loved Isaac! Can we put ’em on a green diet? I’lll toss the first green meat, please.
Oops!
http://flhurricane.com/clarkmodelanimator.php?year=2012&storm=9
I searched WUWT using the search function, and “irene,” but could not locate the post where commenters hashed out the data that Irene was no longer a hurricane before making continental U.S. landfall.
To target by date, though, I went to Wikipedia to find date of landfall – the wikipedia entry for Hurricane Irene notes, in the “North Carolina” section, that Irene had no meteorological readings to support classification as ‘hurricane’ at US landfall.
Therefore, Ike was the last hurricane to make continental U.S. landfall, until evidence shows otherwise. Isaac should not be tallied in the count of 2012 landfall hurricanes.
Lady in Red,
I can assure you that we down here in NO are doing just fine, thanks.
Since there has not been a correlation observed between hurricanes and global warming, what the hell are you talking about?
“””””…..omegaman66 says:
August 31, 2012 at 9:06 pm
Just thought you would want to know……”””””
omegaman, I have the solution to your nutria problem; eat them; better yet, open a restaurant to serve them.
In Ghana, native farmers, now farm raise “grasscutters” a sitting image of nutria, for food. It is a delicacy in Ghana, to the point of threatening wild populations, but they now grow them like rabbits or mink in cages, and all they eat is grass which is available for free in the wild.
So nutria, would be a good start to raising capybara for food.