Yesterday, I wrote about how “climate change” was being blamed for Hurricane Matthew and how ridiculous the effort was, given that it’s been over 4000 days since a major hurricane has hit the USA.
Even NOAA has gotten into the act:
Source: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/events
See here’s the thing, …there is no such thing as a “climate disaster” on the scale of days, weeks, or a month. By definition, climate is typically averaged over 30 years or more. The idea of trying to label a weather event as a climate disaster is not only absurd on it’s face, it is a clear indication of a political intent to try to link individual weather events to climate change.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) defines climate:
What is Climate?
Climate, sometimes understood as the “average weather,” is defined as the measurement of the mean and variability of relevant quantities of certain variables (such as temperature, precipitation or wind) over a period of time, ranging from months to thousands or millions of years.
The classical period is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Climate in a wider sense is the state, including a statistical description, of the climate system.
So, there you have it. Cartoonist Rick McKee of the Augusta Chronicle captured the recent blustering in media and activist websites thusly:
Note: within about 5 minutes of posting this article was updated to include a missing graphic and some text, a versioning problem with the WordPress editor caused it to be posted without these items.
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…IF it hits the U.S…..Big on the IF !!
So what? 47 mph is not 74 mph:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffir%E2%80%93Simpson_scale
..I totally agree, this has been hyped beyond all reality…I lived in Daytona Beach, directly on A1A, during 80’s hurricanes and Tropical Storms….We had ” Hurricane Parties” on the beach for some and slightly inland for others…THIS would be a “Beach Party” !!
LOL
The wind speed decreased in St Augustine when the eye moved closer.
Matt is dead in the water.
When it hit Haiti, it killed lots of people, we still don’t know how many.
One major difference between the Matthew the storm that rolled over Haiti and Matthew the storm that is traveling the Florida Coast, Haiti has very few trees to rob the energy from the Cat 4 storm at ground level as they have cut down most of theirs. So Haiti will naturally have more averaged damage
The main body of this storm is at sea not on land and the highest winds are at the eye, not the fringes. It scraped by Florida still going at over 100 mph at the eye. And is still very strong heading to be more inland when it hits Georgia and South Carolina this evening and tonight. Still a very dangerous storm, and I speak as someone who has gone through plenty of hurricanes in my long life.
Bryan A: can you figure out the difference between Florida not being hit by the eye at all at any time and Haiti which was hit directly by the eye of the hurricane? Hint: the winds around the eye are by far the most destructive, the fringes of a hurricane have much lower speed winds.
emsnews, and let’s not forget that the “western side” of a hurricane is not nearly as bad as it’s eastern side…
They will wake up to calm sea tomorrow.
We once called it simply weather change. A change in the weather was a venerable topic of conversation and carries no guilt. We used to be ‘blown away’ so to speak when a hurricane hit but we didn’t go to the idiocy of also blaming ourselves for it! I guess it’s considered to be ‘progressive’ to hate yourself for being human. Actually no, its only the people left out of the category called diversity who are expected to hate themselves. That would be white males.
+ 1
We need a ‘Like’ / ‘Don’t Like’ counter really bad. Pearse gets my +1, too.
Try +1776.
Agree Kook but Anthony did a survey / poll a while ago and the majority said no. but +1 for Gary as well.
From the tab, I notice that they chose the non-CPI adjusted data. That means they deliberately chose to not factor out inflation, when comparing the cost of recent events to the cost of past events.
Beyond that, there are a lot more people and buildings in those areas today, compared to decades ago.
Anytime someone chooses to compare the cost of “weather” now compared to the past, you know that they are attempting to lie to you.
You mis-interpret the tab selection. CPI-adjusted is selected.
Lol — powerful point (and funny, too)!
If they can blame a Cat 3 hurricane on climate change then I can blame my Cat’s litter box on climate change too. It stinks! and I’m sure AGW has something to do with it.
Oooo… (ain’t nuthin’ worse den cat crap!)
Democrat crap?
You’re lucky. We have three cats. I blame that number on climate change. Here in Kalifornia the number of indoor cats goes up 100% with every 0.1 degree rise in fabricated temperature.
You need to get them cats neutered! 😉
There’s also a really big problem using the dollar value of a storm’s damage as an indicator of anything other than inflation of the dollar as well as more expensive toys being placed along the coastal areas which typically have the threat of hurricanes from June to November each year.
My father was still among the living when Sandy hit, (he had just passed his 94th birthday, and as credentials go he was a senior staffer at Interior, Associate Dean for Research of one of the original land grant schools, and produced several large natural resource inventories for Presidents Kennedy through Regan). By his reckoning 80% of the damage from Sandy was to structures that had no business being located where they were located, nuf said
Took a seminar about Coastal Insurance Reevaluation in light of sandy, tagged on to an Engineering Ethics requirement for Professional Engineering CPC. Those structures are their owners are about to face serious Insurance Costs as a result. They will need a mortgage just for the premiums.
Mark from the Midwest: your belief that little was damaged is colored by your ideology. It was TERRIBLE when that storm hit us here in NY!!! I lived through it in the mountains and it washed away homes, bridges, ate up roads, my family in Jersey City were under water, everything in people’s basements there like washing machines, were ruined, etc. Lots and lots of damage!!! I wish I could have taken your smart dad here to my mountain to show him only he couldn’t have come here except by helicopter. Sheesh.
emsnews,
re-read my post, never said the damage was trivial, but that 80% of the damage was to buildings that had no business being located where they were located. In other words, over time, one could have expected the damage to the areas that were heavily damaged. This wasn’t an shoot-from the hip guess either. My father knew the topology of all of the damaged locations, including soil types, underlying structure, vegetation, the degree of building or over-building, the lack of drainage infrastructure, etc., etc., he had the maps made by two insurance companies and the USGS, and took a hard look out of professional curiosity and as a favor to several former colleagues
We do a similar thing here in Kalifornia. We have wet springs (every five years), followed by a normal dry summer, Santa Ana (dry, hot) winds in the early fall which result in wildfires. Then winter rains which wash away the hill sides and the multi-million dollar homes on the. We listen to the folks who own them cry about all they lost. Kalifornia and insurance companies provide aid, and they rebuild… on the exact same damn spot. Five years later, there they are on the news again crying about the how this is the fourth time this has happened to them in 20 years. Better than reality TV.
I have lived through floods in Arizona, California, Texas, New York, New Jersey and even…Germany! Floods are not funny and blaming people for living in houses when floods happen is strange, you never know when one will hit you and it doesn’t have to hit you, it can hit facilities like roads which you have to use.
Yep. I remember beach “homes” as being shacks on stilts, where you could change clothes, get out of mildly inclement weather, or “camp out” when visiting the beach. If they were knocked down, another cheap one would be built. If the beach/sandbar still existed after the storm. I’m sure some might still exits, if realtors/speculators/politicos haven’t priced the land out of range.
It is impossible to get honesty or objective analysis out of any government agency. They are doing politics and not science. That is just the way it is.
NOAA may be the most dishonest federal agency — but there are so very many it is hard to tell.
Please be realistic: the only reason this hurricane so far isn’t destroying Florida is due to the eye and the majority of the storm staying at sea. A few miles to the West and it would have been highly destructive. NOAA called the path correctly, that it would stay at sea and skim Florida but will do much more damage tonight and tomorrow to Georgia and South Carolina. Nothing to joke about.
Haiti was terrible, lots of dead people, no contact with the parts hardest hit by the hurricane so far, either.
Haiti is screwed by the elites that run it and abuse it -like the Clinton foundation.
Even in good weather people die there, of things we haven’t seen since the 1800’s.
They haven’t even recovered form the Earthquake..
Note: I worked with a Haitian Charity.
There is some sort of “prime directive ” in dealing with the issue of development..
If I were a Starship captain I’d be in the Admiral’s office sitting next to Jim Kirk…
“McCoy eh? any relation to Leonard McCoy?’
emsnews,
“Please be realistic”
About 250,000 people will die today . . and tomorrow, etc, etc…
“Nothing to joke about”
Of course not, but the post is meant to provide some comic relief, ya know?
There’s also the need to make news, TWC had a headline “Matthew Getting Worse” at about the same moment that NOAA published another advisory showing that maximum sustained winds had dropped slightly and that pressure in the eye was rising.
I’m a meteorologist and stray far far away from anything associated with the Weather Channel. Absolutely cannot stand any of them/it and their elitist, political, screwball ways.
..Live shots of St. Augustine look like it is not even a Tropical Storm ??
http://video.foxnews.com/v/3619132170001/hurricane-matthew-bears-down-on-st-augustine-fla-/?#sp=watch-live
LOL
Not even worth bothering to take out the windsurfing gear.
Most pathetic hurricane ever!
..Body Surfing …maybe… ??
Over 800 reported deaths in Haiti? I would call that devastating no matter what the level of preparedness was.
..Never mind John Silver…new pics from St. Augustine show ..not even Body Surfing waves….As most Floridians celebrate that they have been spared, most “Alarmists” are whining because there was not enough destruction !… Truly sad state in America…
@King of Cool:
Speaking of Haiti…
How many lives would have been spared if the Haitians had access to cheap coal fired power plants instead of ripping out every single root and sprig of vegetation for energy needs?
Heck! If the victims of 9/11 can sue Saudi Arabia, the Haitian victims of Matthew should be able to sue Greenpeace.
Haiti would certainly have fared better if they had more Tall Trees to remove cyclonic energy from the storm. Having removed over 90% of their trees certainly is a major factor in their damage levels.
Florida, on the other hand, is relativelt flat though has many trees and numerous tall building to help disperse the blunt force of the wind
King of Cool…Now there’s a story worth reporting and shouting about at the top of the news caster’s lungs. A little history as to why the poor Haitians goes right to the “earthquake relief” that did almost nothing to help house, or rebuild/ build infrastructure for the residents of that poor tortured country. At the center of that scandal is the Clinton State Department vetting of the organizations allowed to provide assistance there. Some estimates are that the people who really needed help got about a penny on the dollar. Kind of hard to expect that a hurricane tearing through would not result in many casualties Haitians are less victims of.the hurricane than victims of robbery in the charity/relief scams going on that denied them any possibility of being prepared for this kind of weather.
First the Joseph Goebbels Dept. at Fox News moved to a camera on top of a high rise building in Jacksonville to get more wind, but you could still see that the trees on ground was not moving at all.
Then they removed the entire live page because nothing happened.
Fox Propaganda Network at work.
…King of…???…That is Haiti …What has that have to do with the U.S. being hit ?
yet fox news at 1pm central claimed the entire city of St Augustine was “completely underwater”.
I cannot stand any of the networks, including Fox. Man they suck!
Tom, I tend to agree with your assessments. Here’s the problem though:
The government we get and our news sources reflect the popular will. And what is our collective will? Entertainment. Entertainment gives us spectacles, even fear inducing hype.
Governments use entertainment to push ideology. NOAA is no exception.
For people with some knowledge of particular subjects, they are appalled by governmental and media pronouncements concerning those subjects. For example: Every time the “news” show, 60 Minutes, had something on I was professionally familiar with, they were either just plain wrong or lying. Remember exploding gas tanks?
Yet another totally over hyped Very Dangerous & Very Large Tropical Storm, just like “SuperStorm Sandy”, that in no way compares to the historical Cat 4 & 5 Hurricanes of the past based on the Ground Level Wind Speeds.
How long before the public get fed up with all the scaremongering when the danger does not manifest itself as described by the so called Scientists?
How long before the Wolf Crying leads to the public not leaving the area when the REALLY BIG ONE does eventually hit and does prove to be disastrous?
Super Storm Sandy was a gigantic mess!!! My daughter lived right by the Holland Tunnel back then and it was totally flooded where she lived, up here in my mountains upstate NY, we were flooded with 12 inches of rain and it was highly dangerous. All the bridges is some communities up here were washed away and hunks of mountain roads vanished, we were nearly totally cut off from the world for a while due to this.
Superstorm Sandy was actually the combination of two different storms, one was Sandy, and the other was a powerful weather front coming from the northwest and they both merged over New York.
Sandy was a rain event when it came ashore.
Nothing unusual, nothing special. Just a lot of rain and some wind.
The Catskills didn’t get to look like rounded hills by the sun and wind. It took a lot of rain.
Instead of waving one’s hands in the air screaming about a ‘super’ storm that certainly was not super; and taking offense when someone points out the common sense of elders who knew better than to build major structures in flood zones; take a little time and read up the actual history of hurricanes and floods in New York.
One of my earlier life jobs was as a laborer cleaning up after hurricane Agnes’s floods in Pennsylvania.
We cut up a lot of trees, removed flood debris and shoveled silt; all of which were located in flood zones.
Before that one, Floyd came through, preceded by Hazel, Betsy, and a long line of hurricanes; many of them devastating.
My StepMother’s family own a house down on the New Jersey beach. She grew up when Atlantic hurricanes were intense monsters that visited the East coast all too frequently; leaving true destruction in their wake.
Every year, she dreads the hurricane season as she is waiting for the year the hurricane smashes her house. Though her family will happily build the same small beach house again on the sand bar that constitutes the island where the house is.
My StepMother understands the reality of where their beach house is. All too many others either don’t check the flood plats when they buy a house, or ignore the obvious, until a storm comes by and water flows naturally downhill until it can’t flow any further, then it pools up.
Not long after Agnes, I was searching for an apartment. I called on one and was told by the land lady that the apartment was downstairs and in terrific condition.
The apartment smelled of mold and damp, yet sported a new coat of paint and carpet; all three of which are loud warning bells.
At the apartment’s entrance, I asked the rental lady if the apartment ever flooded, while looking over her shoulder at the very nearby river. “No!”, she responded.
I thanked her for letting me see the apartment and told her that I needed to check with my lady. I drove to the next apartment possibility, an upstairs one on top of a hill.
I learned later, that apartment building was the first to flood when the river rose.
Flood plats and zoning conditions are the first two things I check when considering a new residence. People are fools when failing to understand that water falls out of the sky naturally and then flows to where water should.
I’m still waiting for them to “re-analyze” historical hurricane data to claim that cat 4s and cat 5s only started showing up after about 1950…
Due to “red political shift” miles were longer in the past, making historical wind speeds faster!
Also, tree rings!
But they have, Notanist!
“The Arbitrary Definition of the Current Major Hurricane Landfall Drought,” Robert E Hart et al, BAMS (2015),
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00185.1 http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00185.1
Anthony Watts posted it.
Great messaging on NOAA’s part, though. “Weather” is not “Climate” in the heading. The body conflates “Weather” and “Climate” when they discuss “events.” “Disaster events” thus become both “Weather” and “Climate” at the same time.
How would NOAA define a “Climate Disaster Event?” Disasters are caused by weather events. We all know what weather events are. What is a climate event?
Screwing with common language is a hallmark of propagandists. This is part of a long-range attempt to confuse weather with AGW climate change. The U.S. Government is complicit with the IPCC in defining climate change as AGW climate change.
With Federal agencies acting this way, how is a citizen to know when she/he/it is getting the truth vs. political spin? In the waning days of the Obama Administration the pressure is immense to get his “climate legacy” in place. Especially since the data increasingly does not support his CAGW meme.
Charlie Skeptic
There’s also a huge problem in that most of the releases are written by “public affairs staffers” who have little or no understanding of the subject matter. Most of them have degrees in Journalism, and most of them are trying to get the attention of other people with degrees in Journalism.
Mark, I am emailing the following to the listed NOAA PR flack, John Leslie:
“Dear Mr. Leslie:
NOAA’s recent “Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters: Table of Events” has led to a bit of confusion.
I’m sure that most people can identify a disaster caused by a “weather disaster event.” It is unclear, however, what is meant by NOAA’s “climate disaster event.”
Climate is defined by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and most other meteorological bureaus as at least thirty (30) years of average weather and other climate metrics. To conflate weather and climate, as NOAA seems to have done, will confuse the average person and cause informed people to question NOAA’s intent.
Please ask your colleagues to correct the erroneous “Table of Events.” Climate is not weather.
—
Dave Fair”
NOAA responded:
“Adam Smith – NOAA Federal
11:48 AM (30 minutes ago)
to John, me
We have historically used the collective term ‘weather and climate events’ since we assess seven different types of disaster events – some of which are exclusively weather (i.e., severe storm outbreak) or climate (i.e., drought) focused.
These seven event types include: tropical cyclones, inland floods, drought &heat waves, severe local storms (i.e., tornado, hail, straight-line wind damage), wildfires, crop freeze events and winter storms.
It is true that longer duration events such as drought, wildfire or long-duration, inland flooding events are more ‘climate’ focused than synoptic-driven (weather) events.
On Fri, Oct 7, 2016 at 2:42 PM, John Leslie – NOAA Federal wrote:
—
John Leslie
NOAA’s Office of Communications for Satellites
Follow us on Twitter: @NOAASatellitePA
Desk: 301-713-0214”
Any thoughts as to: “It is true that longer duration events such as drought, wildfire or long-duration, inland flooding events are more ‘climate’ focused than synoptic-driven (weather) events.?” They all sound like weather-driven events to me.
Charlie Skeptic
So if Matthew was caused by Climate Change, does that mean there has been no Climate Change since 2005?
Yes.
It’s worse than they thought.
We just got a couple inches of snow for the first time in six months. It’s a “climate nuisance”!
A John Harmsworth, We did as well it was, I kid thee not, about 4000 feet up in the mountains , who’d have thunk it !! ( 50 degree north on the western side of the Rockies in October, the media went banana’s about a few accidents rollovers, off the road stuff and off course the culprits had no winter tires ” They were just visiting for the weekend from the coast” ( and got what they deserved in my view) . Anyone travelling this time of the year ( that is from Sept till May) without proper tires, a small safety pack of supplies etc deserves to get into trouble just for a lesson).
There is such a thing as a Climate Disaster:
They have been wasting out money on this stuff for at *Least* 30 years.
“…..Below is a historical table of U.S. Billion-dollar disaster events, summaries, report links and statistics for the 1980–2016 period of record. In 2016 (as of September), there have been 12 weather and climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each across the United States. These events included 4 flooding events and 8 severe storm events. Overall, these events resulted in the deaths of 68 people and had significant economic effects on the areas impacted…….”
Sixty-eight deaths in that time period is most certainly not good news. However, I think the NOAA (and everyone else) should put this into proper perspective here when we see that Fox News is reporting devastation from Matthew in Haiti with over 800 deaths. And Haiti is already one of the poorest nations on Earth….
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/10/07/more-than-800-reported-dead-as-haiti-starts-long-cleanup-after-hurricane-matthew.html.
Just my two cents worth.
http://a57.foxnews.com/www.foxnews.com/images/root_images/0/0/d_20161007_121434.jpg
But how can that be ?? Just look at all the nice homes the Clinton Foundation built for the Haitians with $0.08 for every $1.00 donation going to the Bill, Chelsea and Hillary …ummm, Self Love Box ?
..Oops, …$0.80 out of $1.00…stupid liberal keyboard…Aaaaaarrrrgggggg…lol
Hillary took all that Haiti relief money for herself. Meanwhile, the poor people down there are living in cardboard shacks and literally eating salted mud cakes as though it were food. It reminds me of the rich man and Lazarus story.
This type of hype is ‘The new normal’ as they say. It was funny watching CNN this morning trying to make it so much worse than it evidently was. It reminded me of poor old Geraldo Rivera with his Coke bottle in front of ‘Al Capone’s’ vault.
As just reported on FOX, Cat 3 hasn’t hit Georgia since 1898. Prepare for Goreicals to descend like Harpies yet 1898 doesn’t support the CO2 diatribe… Should be funny
Actually, what similar conditions in 1898?
Storm track isn’t similar
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1898_Georgia_hurricane
1998 was active with 11 hurricanes – hmmmm
Oops, 1998 s/b 1898
NCAR reported AMO doesn’t appear to be a smoking gun
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/catalog/climind/AMO.html
NCAR data is 5 years old (2011)
Correction: 11 storms, 5 were hurricanes, 1 was major in 1898.
No because man’s C02 has made weather go “crazy”. It’s a magic molecule doncha know.
Talk about crazy, August 22 1898 indicates temperatures above 93 degrees F coast to coast.
Clay County Historical record of weather events which predate national records.
http://archives.clayclerk.com/Weather.html
Clay county is just south of Jacksonville, FL.
Hurricanes, Gales, Droughts etc. are nothing unusual for this area of FL.
If it comes ashore, it will probably be a Cat 2. Winds are down to 115 MPH now (110 and up is considered a major). The cone is showing possible l.f. in South Carolina.
Good call, it’s now a cat 2 – here are the other cat 2 events.
Excerpt:
“1898, Aug 31: The last Category 3 hurricane to hit Georgia struck Savannah, killing an estimated 179 people
Although no major hurricanes made direct hits on Georgia during the 1900’s, four minor hurricanes did make direct hits near Savannah, GA.
1911: A category 2 hurricane hit Savannah, wind gusts of 88 mph and a barometric pressure 29.02 in. Seventeen people where killed.
1940: A category 2 hurricane hit Savannah wind gusts of 90 mph. Fifty people where killed.
1947, Oct 15 – a Category 2 hurricane hit Savannah with wind gusts of 95 mph and a barometric pressure 28.76 in. One person was killed. A B-17 bomber dropped 180lbs of dry ice into the Hurricane off the coast of S Carolina in an experiment to lessen the strength of the storm. After the cloud seeding, the storm changed course to the west and many blamed the cloud seeding experiment for the change in direction. A 12 foot storm surge was reported in Savannah but mass evacuations kept casualties at a minimum.
1979 – Hurricane David, a Category 2 hurricane, hit Savannah. Wind gusts up to 90 mph and a barometric pressure of 28.65 in., no deaths or major damage reported.”
it’s a bit windy and drizzly but i haz not been smashed into a single breathlessly exopthalmic smithereen.
it’s the hype that blows cat 5.
To J McClure 2:16pm
I don’t see how any of those can be called Category 2. That requires sustained wind speeds of 96mph, and your report mentions at most gusts at 95mph.
Where is your excerpt from?
Rich.
Looks like it is 4000+ and counting.
Well, we all accept that the climate changes.
Doesn’t the NOAA site show that the number and severity of hurricanes in the last 10 yeas has been LESS and LESS severe than the previous 2 ten year periods?
If so, then the apparent result of a recently (last 30 years) changing climate is, at least for the US, a good thing regarding hurricane activity in the Atlantic.
Same goes for the US and tornadoes: LESS overall and LESS severity in the last 10 years compared to the previous 2 Ten year periods.
A “changing climate” ain’t always a bad thing.
..Now close to Jacksonville..Highest gusts of wind…58 mph ….WTF ? We been had…IMHO..
http://www.usairnet.com/weather/maps/current/florida/wind-gust/
memories of Jacksonville
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/10/03/latest-forecast-track-shows-hurricane-matthew-grazing-florida-east-coast/#comment-2311826
Funny perspective.
Last I heard FL lost power to around 100,000. So this hurricane created the same electrical inconvenience as this incident in the West:
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (AP) — A utility company says two crows triggered a power outage in mid-July that knocked out service to about 100,000 customers in three Western states.
A Billion Dollar Baby from 1954. In Canada
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Hazel
Today’s technology would have recorded much higher wind speeds.
From the Wikipedia entry on Bob “Hurricane” Hazel.
“In less than three weeks, from August 9 through August 25 [1957], Hazle batted .473 with 5 home runs and 19 RBI in 14 games, a sudden burst of unexpected offense that earned him the nickname “Hurricane.” The original Hurricane Hazel had struck the coast of Hazle’s home state, South Carolina, in 1954.”
@ur momisugly roving: As a result, many residential areas located in the local floodplains, such as the Raymore Drive area, were subsequently converted to parkland.
At least they learned the lesson!
Detailed Forecast Jackonsville FL.
This Afternoon
Hurricane conditions expected. Showers and possibly a thunderstorm. Some of the storms could produce heavy rainfall. High near 82. North wind 40 to 60 mph, with gusts as high as 80 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%.
Tonight
Tropical storm conditions expected, with hurricane conditions possible. Showers and possibly a thunderstorm before 2am, then showers likely. Some of the storms could produce heavy rainfall. Low around 75. West wind 39 to 49 mph, with gusts as high as 65 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%.
Saturday
Showers likely, mainly before 8am. Cloudy, with a high near 85. Windy, with a west wind 17 to 21 mph, with gusts as high as 31 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?x=243&y=177&site=jax&zmx=&zmy=&map_x=243&map_y=177#.V_fxoSQwDhA
Again, they keep moving the goalposts. A gust of 80mph does not constitute a hurricane, even if it occurs/occurred, which I very much doubt. Doh!
Rich.
If this were really a major hurricane it would have scraped those coastal communities north of Daytona down to bare ground. I hope people in Florida dont buy in to all this hype and will remain diligent when a real storm hits.