Scott Mandia aka Supermandia crows in his Twitter feed this AM:
The graph from Weather Underground’s Masters of Disaster, Dr. Jeff Masters, follows. But there’s only one problem – one very important storm is missing from the list.
Hurricane expert Dr. Ryan Maue immediately points out:
And, then adds a reference list. But, watch how Supermandia put his foot in his mouth just like media did on confusing what units typhoon wind speed is reported in:
Source: https://twitter.com/AGW_Prof/status/400661282543513600
185 mph equals 160 knots, anyone who knows how to use Google can do this conversion easily by simply typing in this in the Google search box: 185mph to knots
You get this:
https://www.google.com/search?q=185mph+to+knots&ie=utf-8
And there are other confusing elements to the wind speed story. More on that later. Adding to the confusion, tt is also important to note that there have been THREE super typoon Joans, one in 1959, one in 1970, and one in 1997, plus a minor storm named Joan in 1964.
Supertyphoon Joan in 1959 was far stronger (160knots) than the one in 1970 (150knots) which Masters referenced in his list.
Related articles
- Some historical perspectives on Typhoon Haiyan-Yolanda (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Climate Craziness of the Week: A note to ‘Supermandia’ – Mother Nature doesn’t even need Kryptonite to squish you like a bug (wattsupwiththat.com)
They missed three storms just in the Philippines likely as strong, but those pre satellite storms did not have 24 hour, 1oo percent of storm area coverage in THREE DEMENSIONS, measuring of ABOVE GROUND wind speeds? NO, THOSE PRE SATELITE storms had spotty LAND BASED
SURFACE LEVEL wind gauges, not likely at the ideal spot, AT THE IDEAL TIME.
DUH!!!!!!!!!
Historical storms should only be based on surface readings, modified by distance from and relationship to the eye where those readings took place. In may of the pre-satellite storms the wind gauge broke, and it was not in the ideal location. In one case in the Philippine’s, where the wind gauge was not in the ideal location, it broke at 144 MPH, just two less then the land based reading for this storm; which by the way did not break.
Another ‘know-it-all climate scientist’ exposed as knowing nothing, You would have thought he would have done his research properly? No? But there again, this is climate science where research is not necessary just say scary things and you get a Degree, PhD and a nice hockey stick/broom stick to fly around on.
@tobias
Mostly it’s historical, before modern transport it was important to found communities around a reliable supply of water and access to a port for shipping, which was originally the best form of freight transport (and probably still is) Therefore most large cities are built around river mouths.
Many cities are therefore quite flood prone
just a layman but not understanding why on earth politics has anything to do with reporting the weather????? shouldnt observations of weather be pure science? or as joe friday said “just the facts”?
it is OBVIOUS the weather underground has become a political body NOT a science body.
‘Super Typhoon’? So it was a typhoon then *rolling eyes*
I supervised a shallow water seismic survey in Bangladesh back in 1974 for UNOCAL (Union Oil of California). On one of the larger islands (Haitia), the chief of the island told me that on a few of the neighboring islands everyone one was killed during the 1970 Bhola Cyclone. Over 500,000 people were killed during that biggy.
Below, I list a few major ones, without the wind speeds (how they estimate the death toll, I would not know) which I got from Wikipedia:
1582, unnamed, 200,000 dead;
The Great Backerganj Cyclone of 1876, 200,000 dead;
1970 Bhola cyclone, where the official death toll was 500,000, but the number is likely to be higher.
1991 Bangladesh cyclone 150,000.
My apologies for getting away from the thread of discussion.
Whatever Mandia’s error may have been, the deception is in the presentation of the graph. The Y axis shows the storms in order of increasing wind speed, with the latest storm at the top and implying some sort of trend.
If the Y axis was presented in time order (ie earliest at the bottom, latest at the top) there would be no trend over time.
But that wouldn’t present the desired result, would it?
Well, lemme tell you about Wunderground. They “support” Personal Weather Stations”, which is OK, I have one listed there. you can reference it by zip code (BTW, my station is the ONLY one in this zip code, we are a bit rural). The thing is, they have an “algorithm” which automagically unlists the station if it reports temperatures outside the range of neighboring stations. This is all well and good, unless you take into account the local terrain, which they do not. Here (Vermont) we have ridges which run N-S, the sun rises E-W, so my station, (at a higher elevation) will report a temp much higher than the nearest station to the West in the early AM (that station is sighted at a lower elevation and does not get any temp increase until later in the AM , relative to mine). So they conveniently unlist my station, until the local temp synchs up with the far beyond neighbors later in the AM. So much for micro-climate, just throw it out.
I don’t know, but this doesn’t seem quite correct…
… gut feel. And the man that made that ‘guesstimate’ was sacked, so, let’s close the loop on that one now:
1) “Official Sacked for Wrongly Saying Haiyan Had Killed 10,000 People”
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2013/11/guy-who-said-haiyan-killed-10000-filipinos-now-has-no-job/71590/
2) “The Lede: Philippine Official Fired for Estimate of 10,000 Dead From Typhoon”
http://www.onenewspage.com/n/World/74w4f4wd1/The-Lede-Philippine-Official-Fired-for-Estimate-of.htm#PPQP0PTtcqCsvlfT.99
“A senior police commander in the Philippines was fired for telling reporters last weekend that the death toll from the typhoon that devastated the nation could exceed 10,000.”
.