Despite the fact that he’s “given up on climate writing” thanks to the bizarre treatment he got writing at Nate Silver’s “538”, Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. has done one very important climate thing today – he’s updated his now famous graph of hurricane drought.
Earlier today, I got one of those pleading “boo-hoo, shame on you” style comments from the irascible David Appell regarding the hurricane drought saying I’m too scared to discuss what he sees as an invalidation of this graph and record of 4001 days, he wrote:
Funny, that David, in his odd way of thinking. For the record, I don’t have any problems discussing science with Mr. Appell, I only have problems with you when you are being a jerk about differences of opinion. That’s why his comments get held for moderation, because he has a history of behaving in a less than cordialĀ manner here and elsewhere. Despite that, his comments do get published when they meet site policy.
Regarding his link to the paper, here it is:
āThe Arbitrary Definition of the Current Major Hurricane Landfall Drought,ā Robert E Hart et al, BAMS (2015),
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00185.1
I read it this afternoon, and boy, what an effort to make this hurricane drought go away. It’s worthy of the statistical machinations we saw in Marcott et al and Karl et al to make “the pause” disappear.
We live in interesting times.
He who sets the terms of the argument, wins.
Roy:
Spot on. Most people do not understand that this applies to just about any engagement -be it an academic argument, business deal or a duel. Whoever successfully challenges, dictates the discourse and the terms, and as things stand, the environmentalists have managed to dictate the discourse.
That is an issue in terms of an academic debate – but something quite different when you’re looking at the barrel of a pistol aimed at your head in the case of a duel, or badly grounded political decisions that demonstrably are in the process of killing off your regional economy.
I fear Al Gore set the terms. He pegged the gauge somewhere past “silly.”
In actual fact a dying tropical storm can cause huge damage with feet of rain, though winds are only a breeze and the pressure is high. Danger is what danger does. But Al made the claim we’d get clobbered, as did Bill McKibben And Kerry Emanuel. Therefore the Silly Wars began. And I have to admit the irony of 4000 days passing without a major hit is delicious.
We were very lucky with Matthew. Fifty miles west, and it would be a very different headline.
People shouldn’t forget poor Haiti. In the far southwest the storm surge filled their wells with salt water.
Good thing the Clintons spent billions of taxpayer dollars there, preparing them for the worst. Here comes another Clinton payday!
A great opportunity for the Clinton founadtion to step in and help all those poor Haitian victims… As if
The UN has had years, and didn’t even start a sea-wall to protect them. All they succeeded in doing was introducing cholera into a part of the world it didn’t exist, by using cholera -carriers to do the UN work. But just you wait. They will say the cause of the death is the fact “rich nations” have caused the “seas to rise.” (As if a rise a half inch makes a difference when the storm surge is over ten feet.) The UN will say the richer nations should pay a carbon tax to build the sea-walls the UN never built.
Maybe so. Lets stop funding the UN and start funding the people of Haiti. The UN are leeches, middle-men who do worse than nothing, because all the poor get from them is cholera.
Feet of rain, hands of snow, heads of ice.
Brains of dry ice.
Less succinct, but I like this better. (setting poor terms can lead to a loss)
“You see, in this world there’s two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.” … Blondie (Eastwood)
The term ‘making landfall’ is the most important part of all this. There have been hurricanes but they mostly tire themselves out on the Atlantic Ocean’s vast waters so only shipping has to cope with it. The term ‘hitting land’ has to mean something.
For example, this week we saw a good sized, nasty hurricane devastate Cuba and particularly, Haiti and it harmed the Virgin Islands, too. The fact that it skipped along just a short distance offshore of Florida, it is still ‘a major hurricane’ and I would count it as such. Do you?
Indeed, one should include the words ‘Hurricanes hitting the US’ and it has to clarify, not any islands or offshore entities for we happen to have these, for example, the US military base, Gitmo, was very definitely hit by this hurricane. Since it flies the American flag, I would suggest it means US territory was hit. Do we also include Hawaii and Alaska when talking about the weather?
Absolutely! So we have to define what is the ‘US’ if we want to be honest about this matter, OK?
Generally, “US” in this context means the continental United States (Sometimes referred to as the lower 48) . So Hawaii and Gitmo don’t count. Alaska probably doesn’t either, though I don’t think there have been all that many Hurricanes that were still hurricanes by the time they hit Alaska, so that ones probably mostly a moot point as far a major hurricane strikes go.
No one is saying they aren’t major Hurricanes at one point, but it doesn’t matter, what matters based on the chart, since it’s not about that. There are other charts based on that sort of thing. It’s totally irrelevant to this discussion at hand.
..We fly an American flag in China at the U.S. embassy also…So all their weather counts as American weather ? D’oh !
Since it flies the American flag, I would suggest it means US territory was hit.
http://time.com/3672066/guantanamo-bay-history/
By a treaty signed in 1903 and reaffirmed in 1934, the U.S. recognized Cubaās āultimate sovereigntyā over the 45-sq.-mi. enclave in Oriente province near the islandās southeast end.
GITMO is leased for $3,386.25 per year.
The US doesn’t own it. Your position is absurd.
“Since it flies the American flag, I would suggest it means US territory was hit.”
Cubans would definitely not agree. Guantanamo is Cuban territory leased by the US. The whole legal basis for detaining terrorists there was that they were then not in the US, remember?
Sigh. OK: let’s celebrate the fact that both Cuba and Haiti were hit by a very powerful hurricane which destroyed property, killed many people, and was extremely dangerous but hooray! It stayed slightly offshore when hitting the US causing us far fewer problems. Then you can cling to your belief that hurricanes hardly happen…except if you are one of the pieces of real estate slightly south of the US mainland. Then it is all bad luck to you all.
Can’t you all see how this looks to outsiders? It looks really bad! Think about that.
All of you seem to have forgotten about ……… the U.S. Virgin Islands of Saint Croix, Saint John, and Saint Thomas, and many other surrounding minor islands.
For the record, the rules of this graph (major hurricanes making landfall on continental USA) is a not a random silly rule. The fact is, that is the only long term record with any degree of accuracy. Smaller hurricanes, or ones that didn’t hit the USA would often be missed in the past.
What an absurd position to take @emsnews. An embassy territory is not, in any way, legal or supposed, sovereign territory. If you were to be born in an overseas embassy your nationality would be that of the country in which you were born, not that of the country which is running the diplomatic mission. To use America as an example, a child born in embassy property to American parents in say, London, is not a US citizen by right but a British citizen by right of soil. You should brush up on the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961.
@ Craig (@Zoot_C) – October 8, 2016 at 10:28 am
Here ya go Craig, ā¦ā¦ click the following ālinkā and read it, after which you will be better informed to decide as to whether or not an embassy territory is in any way, equivalent to, or considered to be, sovereign territory of the occupying country.
http://www.pathtoforeignservice.com/is-an-embassy-on-foreign-soil-the-sovereign-territory-of-the-host-country-or-the-embassys-country/
I don’t see anyone “celebrating” the fact that Haiti and Cuba were hit.
Your petulance does not become you.
Craig: You are wrong on two counts.
1) Being born in an embassy does make you a US citizen.
2) Being born of US parents, regardless of where in the world it happens, makes you a US citizen.
@Samuel C Cogar I read that before I posted which led me to the Vienna convention. I stand by what I said.
@MarkW No, I’m not.
@ Craig (@Zoot_C) – October 11, 2016 at 2:33 am
So, Craig (@Zoot_C), I suggest that you, post haste, re-educate the US Diplomatic Corps because they were taught to believe the following, to wit:
How long has this ridiculous set of arguments been going on about what constitutes the United States?
Silly and irrelevant to anything remotely to do with climate.
Maybe next year some record lows for the United States will be set at the Embassy in Moscow or perhaps a record high at our embassy in Saudi Arabia
A warmist wanting to move the goalposts again. How unexpected! I think we should retain the definition that has been accepted since well before I was born, hitting has always been making landfall.
Incidentally, a rain storm that floods parts of LA does not end the California drought. The same concept applies. Therefore, it will take several cat.3 hurricanes per year in several consecutive years to end this drought.
emsnews seems to me YOU are the only person claiming some celebration about the deaths in Haiti, NOT the honest people that post truth here……..WE dont look bad to the rest of the world no matter how hard DIShonest people like you attempt to FALSELY portray us.
They can – and do – cool past temperatures and raise recent temperatures. Not so easy to re-write the hurricane record.
Jimmy, Wiki is already rewriting Hurricane wind speeds for Hurricane Andrew.
You can change it all you want. I went there. I saw what it did. I have absolutely no idea what the wind speeds were. But one thing I can guarantee, and what the folks that lived through it can guarantee is that the total devastation was much more like a tornado and not a hurricane. A very, very large tornado. All the hurricanes that I’ve been through and all the ones that I’ve ever seen pictures from or evidence of don’t begin to approach what happened with Andrew (except perhaps for Galveston).
Oh, they’ll try, Jimmy. They probably already have, with the help of the MSM lapdogs.
Not so difficult perhaps as methodology changes. IMV, it is simple. The continental US must experience cat 3 surface winds, just as older storms were recorded. End of story. ( Even this makes modern storms more likely to register higher with the likelihood of more locations where wind speed is recorded)
What about if it hits a US Navy ship at sea? Or a private boat flagged as American, or just has an American on board? Perhaps one called the “Reductio ad Absurdum”?
Contiguous United States. Problem solved
Actually, hurricanes menacing shipping are extremely important things to track! And think about, too, no less. I know my caution about all the joy here that we are still free of the most dangerous levels of hurricanes is understandable, it LOOKS BAD TO OUTSIDERS who see a dangerous storm. Trust me on this.
Finess matters! Agreeing that we had a very dangerous brush with a very dangerous storm that killed many people days earlier looks both more humane, more caring, more understanding than the grandstanding going on here. Hate me with passion, just remember: if you look heartless, you will be disliked and not followed by people outside the group here.
hilarious stuff you write claiming such “joy” here contrasted to your SADNESS that a major hurricane did NOT hit the USA and kill hundreds here………..YOU are a FARCE in any discussion among rational intelligent adults.
ems old soul,
I quite agree about hurricane tracking – and predicting, within the acknowledged envelope of uncertainty, certainly 24 + hours ahead.
This for ships and folk ashore – landlubbers, if you like.
‘The Watch Ashore’ is my preference, if it is of interest.
Hurricanes are dangerous. Agreed by all.
H/Matthew, at Cat 3/4/5 – whatever – was very dangerous.
Unhappily many – probably thousands, we will find when comms are fully open, even if the insatiable MSM has moved on – have lost their lives, and hugely more will have lost everything – and I know many had little enough to begin with.
I cannot imagine owning just the clothes on my back, and one shoe. Finish.
*** I am sure it is terrifying for them.
*** Again. As Haiti has had several calamities.
All this in either not in dispute, or, at worst, simple common sense!!
All that said, either a Cat 3 (or 4 or 5) storm has made landfall in the ‘Lower 48′ – or Contiguous States’ or not.
I agree that it was close – fifty miles is not far, and the margin may have been less – but H/Matthew did not make landfall at Cat 3 or above. So far.
Recurving – as POTUS, the Noted Meteorologist, announced – could still change that.
Envelopes of uncertainty – at this time. Big ones.
By the way, I have several American coins upstairs – likely a dollar’s worth in all, and a shirt I bought in Houston.
It rained here, this afternoon.
‘Rain in the US’??
I suggest not . . . . . . . . .
Auto – very glad that I no longer get to put myself [and my crew, and my ship] in the way of Beaufort Force 12 winds. Very glad indeed.
Question:
Has a major hurricane, Cat 3, 4, or 5 made landfall on the Continental contiguous 48 states in the last 4001 days?
No
“HAROLD October 7, 2016 at 9:56 pm
No”
Well then, that’s settled.
What else would we like to talk about?
āWhat else would we like to talk about?ā
Letās talk about dropping a nuclear bomb on top of an Atlantic hurricane that is threatening to ādestructā the coastal US mainland ā¦ā¦. to see iffen that would make it a non-destructive ātropical depressionā ā¦ā¦ā¦ā¦ā¦.. (pun intended).
Not so difficult perhaps as methodology changes. IMV, it is simple. The continental US must experience cat 3 surface winds, just as older storms were recorded. End of story. ( Even this makes modern storms more likely to register higher with the likelihood of more locations where wind speed is recorded)
going by a max wind gust is not doubt heavily biased as well because of the difference in density of readings due to population changes. Just another reflection of the kind of soft unreliable science that pervades climate science, which pretty much is like weather prediction was about a 100 years ago. And its a lot worse that since one cannot even warm up a greenhouse with the greenhouse effect.
Based on recorded sustained wind measurements by surface stations.
1. Mathew was a Saffir-Simpson category 1 hurricane from NDBC station 42058 (south of Haiti) to Freeport, Bahamas. On-line photos of damage are consistent with actual winds speeds measured by surface anemometers.
2. There are no recorded wind data by surface anemometers in Florida of over 56 knots. Many photos of damage on the eastern shore of Florida are entirely consistent with tropical storm scale winds.
The Saffir-Simpson scale correlates surface damage with sustained surface wind speeds. Actual observed damage tells the story if you don’t have actual measured speeds recorded by anemometers.
3. The wind speeds claimed by the national hurricane center are not confirmed by observed facts.
BW… well now, it’s not wind speed after all, but water damage. If CAGW can’t win the argument, they’ll just change the parameters.
I got caught up in the fear mongering. Hard not to do when every news outlet is screaming disaster. Post event (wet finger in the air) seems this storm was not much beyond a cat 1 after Haiti/Cuba. Maybe the cat 3 winds were hiding somewhere in the deep storm. However, thanks to this site I have another tool in the box looking at the National Data Buoy Center site.
Storm apparently broke the moorings from one of the buoys. Wonder where they’ll find that one.
I would give you points for making Appell look like a foolish a-hole, but he does that himself so very well.
That is one hell of a ridiculous pretzel of a paper. Makes me think folks out there in the climategate-ish world were talking, “We need to get rid of this drought.”
You mean, David Appell is still alive? I thought he’d been killed by climate change a few years back? It’s a MIRACLE!
good grief…I had no idea he was still around
Oh, he’s still around – just ask anybody who visits Judith Curry’s or Roy Spencer’s sites.
“Crazy Davy” is what happens when a fat guy lives alone with a dozen feral cats…
They are now claiming three Florida deaths due to Mathew, although a trial of the hurricane
would render such a claim insufficient to convict the cane : a woman died of a heat arrest and the responders could not reach her because of Matthew. Proving Mathew guilty would, of course, require proving that the woman would have survived had the responder reached her, which cannot be proven. Case dismissed.
One woman was killed by a falling tree.
2 falling trees and 2 carbon monoxide deaths. I would argue the trees count and the CO does not…
I live, work, and play on Mount Hood, in Oregon. We frequently experience winds in excess of 100mph, at Timberline Lodge, where I work. (6,000ft elevation) There are 3 buildings at 7,000′, and one building at 8,540′. These buildings frequently see wind speeds in excess of 140mph, mostly during the winter months.
We rarely need to perform repairs due to high winds. All of the buildings but one are huge, more than fifty feet in height, and 100’X100′. The smaller building is our hotel/wedding/convention venue, located at seven thousand feet. It has a shake roof that stays where it should, and was built in 1939.
Additionally, we receive between 400″ and 800″ of snow each winter, 400 people work here, and rarely does anyone call in to say they can’t make it.
Isn’t the atmosphere thinner up there at 8000 feet? Thus, a 100-mph wind might have a lesser impact than it would at a lower altitude. (I’m asking, not as a skeptic of your post, but because I’d like to know, and I don’t.)
John,
You are correct, the impact on structures is also related to the mass of the air, so the denser he air the greater the force. The force is proportional to the density times the velocity squared.
Ever see the ghost of caretaker Jack Torrance roaming around?
Colorado, too, has high wind speeds at high altitudes. I think the record is 201mph on top of Longs Peak @ 14,300′. But the City of Boulder at about a mile high gets pretty strong gusts; 147mph is their record.
I find it odd that folk can get into an argument about how one “defines” a hurricane making landfall in the United States as though this is an important matter for the debating team. Kind of silly really. Hurricanes are part of the mix for the South and East coast weather that we need to study and understand in order to more reliably forecast what they are going to do and where they are going to do it in order to save economic resources and lives. Before environmentalists took up the Climate Change Cudgel it was a reasonable discussion.
Well said, fossilsage.
+1000
I believe the definition to be a response to the prediction that global warming would kill billions and billions of Americans because of a raging increase in the number of hurricanes. That implies a couple things that didn’t happen and that is recorded in the current graph. The graph is a simple consequence of the failed prediction and nothing more.
well dp on the face of it; anybody who claims that global warming is going to kill billions and billions of Americans is utterly incompetent to discuss shit or shinola, argument over. As for the rest of your post the implication is you are confused or high and having trouble making your meaning understood.
dp,
Yes, it is a response to the ridiculousness of the blame-bad-weather-on-global-warming crowd. But the Pielke graph is based on the same sort of fallacy. Ike was a major hurricane that impacted the U.S., but it dropped down from cat 3 to cat 2 just before the eye reached land, so it does not count. The eye of Matthew stayed just off shore, so it does not count. Hurricanes that hit Cuba or Haiti or Mexico don’t count. It is all a bit silly. Curious, but not really important.
You have to wonder whether, if the last several years had shown a rash of cat 3-5 hurricanes making landfall on the East coast, any climate scientists would be arguing that it was just a statistical anomaly arising from “arbitrary” definitions of landfall.
I think the center of the eye has to cross the coast, not just an eye band gusting to 107 mph on the Cape Canaveral point.
Not related to the eye, but to surface recorded wind speed. The US land surface must experience cat 3 or higher winds.
The CAGW Deception has consequences, and is causing every official pronouncement to be questioned.. Now, NOAA’s hurricane data is being looked at with a skeptical eye. And who could blame the skeptics for their lack of faith in NOAA?
No one….NHC should have told people how small the eye was….they should have admitted it was going through an eye wall change and would come out a cat 3…etc
…the blame is totally in their court
Sorry, don’t get it. What is the point of the Pielke graph, if not to provide some demonstration of whether or not a warming planet generates more frequent and stronger storms? If that is the point, why rule out hurricanes that don’t make landfall in the contiguous US? And if that is not the point, what is? Thanks.
That pretty much sums it up.
In the 1970s Florida was hit by six major hurricanes in seven years:
http://notrickszone.com/2016/10/07/rare-event-millions-of-children-under-11-see-first-time-major-hurricane-hit-florida/
I live on the Florida “Space Coast” so let me assure you that it is a big deal that 4001 days have elapsed since the last landfall of a major hurricane.
What is wrong with you? Don’t you understand that major hurricanes kill people?
In years past there was no way to reliably count hurricanes at sea. They could only be reliably counted if they hit land. Thus, if you want a time series that extends to before satellites and radar you can only count those that hit land.
You are wrong. Not only could they ‘count hurricanes’ many years ago, they were most careful starting in the mid-1800’s to do so because hurricanes affect shipping tremendously and it was highest importance to track possible hurricanes at sea. Even the infamous hurricane that hit Galveston, ships at sea tracked it and tried to warn Galveston about this dangerous storm. The US has an ‘index of hurricanes’ going back to 1851. There is this gap between 1885 and 1921.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/tracks/
@emsnews The Pielke graph is the measure we have. It you feel that a different measure is required by all means do the hard work of collecting the data. The fact that the Pielke graph does not meet your need to show an increase in storm frequency or severity does not give you the right or ability to arbitrarily redefine it. If you are so sure that things are worse, prove it!
emsnews,
Certainly you are not suggesting that plotting storm tracks and speed of wind was as accurate in the 19th C as it is today with the synoptic view provided by satellites, aircraft, and Doppler radar? We have been aware of NH hurricanes since the time of the Spanish galleons, but that doesn’t mean we have a complete or even reliable historical record. The best we can say is that we have a record of some, and usually those that either made landfall or came close to land. To try to say anything about the frequency over time would end up with a strong bias suggesting hurricanes are more frequent today.
If you hold the view that all climate is local, then observing patterns in sub-global areas is relevant to your position. So trends in the US, or Europe, or South America, or …(you name it) are of interest. In this case there is a well-defined (or maybe not-so-well defined) record for the United States. To find a trend, you can’t be ‘adjusting’ the parameters of the record at your convenience. So Dr. Pielke’s graph is fit for purpose.
JMA: … why rule out hurricanes that donāt make landfall in the contiguous US?
If you hold the view that all climate is local, then it makes sense to look at sub-global trends in significant areas, such as Europe, South America, China, the US, etc. In this case there is a long record (hopefully well defined) that can be extended to include ongoing events. But one cannot be ‘adjusting’ the parameters that define that area. Dr. Pielke’s graph is very much fit for purpose.
MODS: Apology for the double post. Feel free to eliminate either.
js
It’s fit for some purpose–just asking for clarification as to what that is. Certainly it’s an interesting historical document, but surely it would be nice for climatological purposes to develop a more global metric? Not sure when the hurricane data became reliable but if the satellite data started in about 1979 it would be interesting to look at global storm index trends since then, as some warming has occurred over the period. If there is no trend corresponding to global warming maybe there are better ones correlated to ocean cycles.
E.g. Chylek, P. & Lesins, G. (2008). “Multidecadal variability of Atlantic hurricane activity: 1851ā2007”. Journal of Geophysical Research. 113: D22106. Bibcode:2008JGRD..11322106C. doi:10.1029/2008JD010036
Climate scaremongers, referring to the US after the signature hurricane Katrina, warned sternly “Get used to this. We will have more frequent and more severe hurricanes in the near future as CO2 keeps increasing!”
So how could we have subsequently set a new record interval between such major hurricane landfalls in the US? The graph is supremely ironic and informative, ain’t it? Hey?
You have to give the scare mongers credit. They were half right. Co2 levels did keep going up.
Because reliable records for hurricanes that hit places other than the continental US do not go back that far.
[snippity snip snip]
I looked at the comment for awhile trying to decide if I should put in the effort to salvage some points, most of which I agree with, but the tone was just too over the top to salvage. For those who wonder, the point of the original comment was something along the lines of a bad week for the POTUS. Lots of events around the world mentioned. ~ you-know-who on a guest appearance.
Anthony & Mods: The post above needs some Snips!
Should probably be done away with altogether.
There are legitimate criticisms that can be made about these subjects, but this comment is, IMHO, well over the line and not just because of the sexual innuendo. There should be room for sarcasm, but not without limit. I second the call for some snipping.
.. Savannah, Georgia ….Highest ” Wind Gust” = 49 mph….
http://www.usairnet.com/weather/maps/current/georgia/wind-gust/
Somebody got some splainin’ to do….
That paper sure goes a long way to prove nothing in particular. I think most of us know that the drought is mostly luck so who really cares. It’s just a neat anomaly and has a lot to do with the wind shear patterns that don’t favor landfall. Yes, idiots, we know there were ‘lots of typhoons last year in the Pacific.’ Yes, idiots, we know that ‘there’s more to the oceans than just the North Atlantic.’ You don’t need to point me toward a scientistical graphic at Skeptical Science or show me how Exxon funds everybody and their dog on DeSmog Blog. I can see the ACE trends myself and they look pretty unremarkable.
These days there is no chance that a hurricane will go unrecorded. Before the satellite era, it was possible.
The stipulation that the hurricane has to make landfall in America makes it possible to compare with the historical record. You have to have some standard, pick whatever you want. Even ‘hurricane’ is arbitrary … it wasn’t passed down to us on a stone tablet after all. š
Having skimmed the paper in question, I came to the conclusion that if you sliced the data a little differently, it convincingly showed that Major Hurricanes, whether you classify them as >96kn or >100kn wind speed, are getting much more rare. This sparsity extends over the last 30 years, not just the last 10. Thus, it can be classified as climate, not weather.
Funny how the warmistas wrap themselves in the flag of science, until it tells them what they don’t want to hear. Then they turn on science and undermine it with specious arguments.
WaPo: The capitol weather gang deplores Drudge’s claim that Matthew was being hyped by the NHC.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/10/06/drudge-report-posts-infuriating-and-flawed-comments-on-hurricane-matthew/
That cuts both ways.
What the CW “Gang” isn’t taking into account is that lives are also put at risk by “crying wolf.” E.g., because Bloomberg and others over-hyped Irene, some people likely under-reacted the next year when hearing warnings about Sandy.
That’s a bit of a diversion. Drudge didn’t specifically accuse the NHC of hyping, but “the government”–which includes NOAA, which was fairly alarmist, IIRC.
It seemed to me that the message from the WaPo, NYT, etc. deliberately omitted or played down the measured on-land sustained wind speeds from Cuba, Haiti, the Bahamas, and south Florida, and played up the highest wind-burst speeds from these locations. I don’t recall such strongly unbalanced reporting about any prior hurricane.
PS: Wouldn’t it be a laugh if Matthew breaks the record on its loop-back?
Does the National Hurricane Center receive any tax money? If so, it depends on politicians for that portion of its funding and must, therefore, tailor its public utterances to justify the money it receives. If not, then it is possible to regard its utterances as non-political; but even in that circumstance, I wouldn’t discount political motives.
>>To make matters worse, Drudge took to Twitter and accused
>>the government of purposefully inflating Matthewās intensity to
>>send a message about climate change.
But Drudge was right.
Is anyone going to apologise to them?
R
The [National Hurricane Center] is the government agency responsible for determining [hurricane intensity] and it is apolitical as it gets.
Make appropriate substitutions between the square brackets: FBI, IRS, Dept of Education, EPA, NOAA, inter alia and you may start to get the picture.
It looks like, for whatever reason, this storm was over-hyped (not to diminish the harm it has caused many). The problem is, if there is a true cat 3+ storm in the future, people will decide to ride it out based on their experience with this storm. People in the future may die because of how they dealt with this storm. That is not acceptable.
No doubt that if this hurricane had hit the US mainland as a cat 4, it would have been proof of CAGW. I’m sure D Appell would have been all over Anthony had that happened. How quickly CAGW forgets that this is weather and not climate, as they have made abundantly clear. Climate is a long term change in the weather, one or two storms in 10 years doesn’t qualify as a change towards catastrophic AGW. It’s a change all right, it’s in the wrong direction for CAGW. Does that mean temperatures are actually dropping based on the lack of hurricanes or the drought in the western US ending ? Doesn’t the models show just the opposite ? And we believe the models, right ?
If I pointed out as a skeptic that a cat 3 hurricane as something normal for that part of the world, oh horrors ! The warmist group still feels justified in calling it AGW ? If not outright, then they have certainly implied it as in the terms they were using, like ” unprecedented ” and ” never seen anything like it ” .
Fortunately, this storm looks like it’ll turn out to sea, unlike the hurricane that buzzed up the Atlantic Coast in 1938. Providence, R.I. was under 20 feet of water. I can’t imagine how the CAGW people would spin a storm like that today. Of course, the real trouble is that if it feeds up into Pennsylvania and sits there for days feeding rivers that are a mile wide and an inch deep. ( not that has ever happened before… sarc ).
If global warming were real, that storm wouldn’t have weakened would it ? Isn’t that the way CAGW tells the story ? So now the fan club of CAGW is waving the flag of the flooding aspect. When wasn’t tidal surge a part of hurricanes ?
Correct, the warmists would have been crowing about a big hurricane. But the contrary is also true: this site must be careful about celebrating very, very close misses whereby hurricanes kill people and destroy property in the US but the eye doesn’t pass over a city. This looks bad, it looks like you all are cynical, cold people who don’t care. It is a publicity disaster, in short. Be reasonable: we just had a very, very close scrape with a very dangerous hurricane. We were very lucky that a cold front shoved the eye barely offshore.
Sigh…the storm was “very, very dangerous” when it was direct hitting, Haiti, Cuba and the Bahamas. Cat 5 and 4. THEN it weakened, and followed a more offshore track from Florida. Rick Scott said don’t go outside… South Beach in Miami had 200 surfers out. With another 200 on the beach. I don’t care what NHC, NOAA, NWS or The Weather Channel says anymore, the people I know and trust up and down the Florida coastline reported winds in the 30 to 50 mph range, and that is NOT a “very, very dangerous hurricane.”
All hurricane are dangerous. The way the current argument is set up is designed to make it seem that skeptics are cold and cynical. I read somewhere a tree fell on someone and killed them in this storm. Is it no less tragic that on a clear day a woman was killed when a gust of wind snapped a branch and killed her ?
I’m not arguing the human side of this argument the diaster brought about by storms. What i/we are arguing is the need to destroy our economy based on fly by the seat of your pants predictions. Specifically, ” more frequent and stronger hurricanes ” . I am certain that the differences between this storm and a cat 5 hitting Florida or anywhere else would be significant regardless of flooding. The flooding that occurs in Pennsylvania after a hurricane comes ashore is very common. While terrible, it isn’t something new.
It’d be nice to have some real science being done rather than the alarmist rhetoric blinded by AGW. Until the CAGW community comes foward and acknowledges that the science isn’t settled, we will see more of the same. After all, I’m a criminal in the eyes of a true believer. ( and I think the believers are useful idiots by communists )
A what ? A Cold Front ?
Rishrac, ā¦ā¦. did you know that severe flooding can occur in West Virginia after a hurricane comes ashore ………… in the Gulf of Mexico?
It sure nuff can, when the remnants of that hurricane moves north by northeast up the Mississippi River watershed, ā¦. and then up the Ohio River watershed ā¦ā¦ where it is then āpushed or suckedā over to and up-n-over the mountains in WV ā¦.. wherein it rains like a female bovine peeing on a flat rock.
Pielke Fils went out to play,
There’s recess time every day,
We can always hope and pray,
He’ll get bored, rejoin the fray.
========================
@Anthony Watts,
You lowered the tone of this fine blog by mentioning the loony David Appell.
There used to be efforts to weaken hurricanes and steer them away from land, but since natural disasters feed the desired false narratives, I take it that these efforts don’t get much funding?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1566898/Scientists-a-step-closer-to-steering-hurricanes.html
When you build thousands and thousands of windmills in Texas to generate electricity, you must remove a certain amount of the wind energy needed to steer hurricanes away from the east coast.
What you have done is to install billions of butterflies all beating their wings at once with absolutely no regard to the effect it has on chaotic weather systems.
Since “you can’t be too careful” regarding changing the environment, I’m wholly surprised that the EPA has never issued an endangerment finding regarding the construction of windmills.
This observation, of course, is all settled science courtesy of Edward Lorenz.
Much has been said by alarmists about more severe hurricanes, and more severe WX in general. Many alarmists take a view of global warming with a religious fervor. I am not a religious person, but if I were an agnostic, I could easily be converted to the anti-global warming cause after viewing the teasing track of Matthew, not quite making landfall so far, but so close, and a little closer, but not quite there, for hundreds of miles. Imagine the anguish of the contrary believers as the days clock by: 4000, 4001, 4002……4300 ?
Lets hope that it continues for another 4000 days. Fat chance….
The pseudoscientist cargo-cultists will always keep “moving the goalposts.” That is all this is.
Moving the goalposts when nature doesn’t cooperate with the CAGW alarmism of increasing weather threats. Another example is Tom Karl’s Pause Buster pseudoescience Science paper where they redefined old rules to keep the climate scam animated like Frankenstein-esque zombie.
CAGW needs a headshot. Nature will likely deliver it by 2019 with several back-to-back NH brutal winters.
“CAGW needs a headshot. Nature will likely deliver it by 2019 with several back-to-back NH brutal winters.”
Facts and simple observations seem irrelevant to these people. When I tally everything up that ought to introduce some uncertainty into this religion and see what little effect it has, it makes me a pessimist.
The only up-side I see on the horizon is a President Clinton inheriting the Obama economy that is about to collapse and will have no one to blame but Democrats. Everywhere we look across the world we see imminent real manmade calamities: coming EU collapse, Russian aggression in multple countries, China’s debt bubble, the US’s enormous debt bubble.
Time to just buy a cabin in the Wyoming wilderness and wait it out.
joelobryan,
You couldn’t possibly believe a democrat would accept responsibility for anything bad.
This is Bush’s economy and a congress full of republicans is proof enough who’s at fault.
Let’s put this in perspective , since the last major hurricane hit the USA there have been nearly 200,000 murders . No meaningful sea rise , virtually no detectible temperature change ,and increasing Polar bear populations (global warming’s mascot ) .
Yet the President claims the number #1 threat is global warming ? ( Rebranded Climate Change )
Aren’t the real DENIERS those that think humans are now in charge of Mother Natures climate show .
As long as that big thing in the sky comes up each morning humans are a bit player .
Maybe the eco -vangelists see the staggering lose of life as a positive population control measure because the highest office in the land has done virtually nothing about it . Focusing instead on setting the earth’s thermostat , his # 1 priority .
What President has ever been 15 priorities away from those of the population ?
I am a bit surprised that no-one has made any mention of the data presented on WUWT’s “extreme weather” page .
The charts on global accumulated cyclone energy for example show no current difference to the situation in the 1970s , although in the intervening period the index did increase. Is the data presented by Dr Ryan Maue not regarded as trustworthy ? Atlantic storm frequency does not seem to be a cause for concern either.
Similarly there is little change in Australian cyclone frequency (Govt data) , and data from the US Geol service shows no change in US streamflow., These are presumably trusted sources and we have actors lecturing us on the need to listen to what the scientific experts are saying.On the data as summarised in these few charts, assuming that it is trustworthy.
There seems little evidence of dramatic changes in storm frequency or severity in either the Atlantic or Pacific , although of course every incident causes a lot of personal tragedy.
What do current papers, not yet incorporated in summaries such as those mentioned above , tell us about storm frequency in recent decades ?.
I’ve seen no significant increase in extreme weather on a global scale in any variable. The possible exceptions would be short term heavy rainfall and warm nights. However, overall rainfall has increased worldwide in recent decades so we would expect more short term downpours.
The other notable change has been more extreme high minimum temperatures. Read that again and let it sink in. This has come from (1) overall general warming (2) higher humidity and precipitation and (3) urban heat island
But hurricanes, cold waves, tornadoes, mid-latitude cyclones, heat waves, snow… all show little or no trend.
The “extreme weather” mantra has been repeated so often that it is generally accepted as fact even though it completely lacks observational basis.
Mikewaite,
That should be US Geological Survey, although in recent years, US Biological Survey (US BS) might be more appropriate. It is another instance of a meritorious, reputable agency being downgraded by politics.
Matthew makes landfall at Hilton Head Island as a Cat2 storm. The streak continues….
Thanks Matt. And the highest recorded wind speed at ground level was…?
Hilton Head Airport (about a mile from the beach) reports gusts to 87 mph and sustained wind 52 mph. Thats Cat 1. At most.
Cat 1 threshold is 74 MPH.
Number of days since a hurricane hit the US is about as interesting as the number of days since I last had sex and as meaningless in the context of climate change.
What would be more interesting would be the average product of number of hurricanes and the energy in them
Known as ACE “Accumulated Cyclone Energy”. A well-known metric. Available e. g. here:
Isn’t the Global Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) a good indicator? It shows a lull of 8 years before this El Nino.
http://models.weatherbell.com/tropical.php
In greatest anxiety to keep up the story lines here, people have to ignore salient facts. For example: hurricanes at sea. Does anyone here think there was NO INFORMATION about this before satellites? That is ridiculous.
Ships at sea reported hurricanes for many, many years. Recognition of hurricane alley between Africa and the Caribbean Sea is very old. Certainly during the 19th century with a great deal of shipping at stake, sailors and countries kept close track of hurricanes on the Atlantic Ocean and they made maps and graphs to illustrate this and talked about this with each other.
The weather stations in the various Caribbean Islands were highly important once electronic communication was established over 100 years ago, for example.
Dear readers of this site: putting your collective heads in the sand, belittling what is going on, does you all no good. It might make you all feel better in your collective but it won’t look good to anyone on the outside.
Hurricanes like the present one have happened for centuries and THAT should be our line of defense, not this fiddling with the data to ignore the obvious. Treating Cuba, for example, as alien territory that doesn’t matter is dishonest. Basing one’s ‘hurricane drought’ on this subterfuge looks bad. I am asking for reasonableness here, also, looking less petulant.
emsnews: there are many hurricane statistics available. Landfalling American lower-48 major hurricanes is just one of them. It’s an important one to the American people, I would guess. I’m not American, so I merely opine…
As for hurricanes at sea, yes, lots have been recorded but also lots are bound to have been missed. For that reason the historical data are less reliable if one wants to do any decent statistical analysis.
Rich.
“As for hurricanes at sea, yes, lots have been recorded but also lots are bound to have been missed.”
And many that were found were never reported, because the people Ā“who found them didn’t survive to tell the tale.
And hurricanes were indeed very difficult to locate and predict before satellites. Read up on the history of “Halsey’s Typhoon” in December 1944 and see how difficult hurricane detection and prediction was, even for specialists, even at a time when there were literally thousands of ships and aircraft constantly criss-crossing the Pacific.
Incidentally that is the hurricane in “The Caine Mutiny”.
Any Nyah-Nyah tone here is a justifiably irked reaction to the president’s repeated claims that the effects of climate change due to various extreme weather events are here (in the US) now and can be seen just by looking.
Another provocation was the one-sided alarmism of the MSM. As I posted in an earlier thread, WaPo was arrogantly saying something like, “Matthew will crash into Fort Lauderdale in 24 hours as a category 4 hurricane.” It definitely said “wiil.” This know-it-all tone is sickenly familiar and rebukable.
truth is YOU are here to stir up trouble with your inane comments about the people that post here……HOST if i am out of line for confronting this poster i apologize to YOU, but that poster merits nothing but ridicule.
my comment was for emsnews, the formatting placed it away from their post……
emsnews,
In the spirit of “reasonableness,” can you assure everyone that the 19th C hurricane record is as comprehensive as it is today, after spending billions of dollars on monitoring systems? Can you assure us that the intensity of the storms was as well characterized before hurricane categories were defined, and there were technological solutions to measuring the high-velocity winds at sea?
Lots of emotion, lots of strawman from emsnews.
emsnews,
“Dear readers of this site: putting your collective heads in the sand, belittling what is going on, does you all no good. It might make you all feel better in your collective but it wonāt look good to anyone on the outside.”
Where is your grief over the 250,000+ people who did die yesterday? . . but “on the outside” of the mass media spotlight of officially sanctioned tragedy?
“Treating Cuba, for example, as alien territory that doesnāt matter is dishonest.”
Then what shall we call your (and the rest of) collective public concern on demand? Why stop at Cuba? Why stop at hurricanes? Why stop at what some zombie “elite” media corporations happen to serve up today as the special lives that we all must care ever so virtuously about, in a (to me) ghoulish occultism exercise . .. That ain’t my God you’re worshiping.
And the Lord said, Whereunto then shall I liken the men of this generation? and to what are they like?
They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept.
Beating the horse dead
I am getting concerned about official anemometers going AWOL as the wind speeds increase. For example, http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/show_plot.php?station=fpkg1&meas=w10m&uom=E&time_diff=-4&time_label=EDT and http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=FPKG1 shows that FPKG1 (at +32.0, -80.9) had sustained speeds of 51.1 & 49.9 knots respectively at 0406 & 0412EDT, but then there is no later data. Was a gust of 62 knots really sufficient to kill it? Or, if a gust killed it, it probably wasn’t recorded. How are we supposed to gauge the force of a hurricane if anemometers are too weedy to survive 80mph gusts?
There was another one yesterday which also went AWOL.
Rich.
It’s not just the http://www.ndbc records. Look at https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/cape-canaveral/historic , which interested me, because I saw a report of something like a 97mph gust at Canaveral. Well, there are no data between 14:58 on the 6th (13mph, barometer falling) and 15:58 on the 7th (32mph, barometer rising).
I hate to use the cee word (for conspiracy) but this is getting ridiculous. Steve Goddard, you need to get on this!
Rich.
It’s not just the http://www.ndbc records. Look at https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/cape-canaveral/historic , which interested me, because I saw a report of something like a 97mph gust at Canaveral. Well, there are no data between 14:58 on the 6th (13mph, barometer falling) and 15:58 on the 7th (32mph, barometer rising).
I don’t want to use the cee word but this is getting ridiculous. Steve G, you need to get on this!
Rich.
Here’s a Canaveral quote from https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/10/07/hurricane-matthew-passes-by-cape-canaveral-coastline/ :
“According to NASA, Cape Canaveral had top sustained winds of 90 mph, with a gust to 107 mph.”
Where is the evidence? One ndbc station which didn’t go AWOL, TRDBF1, recorded only 47 knots sustained (I’ve saved the graph). It’s at 28.4N/80.6W which pretty much matches the location for Cape Canaveral.
Rich.
I was watching radar when the eye made landfall at Freeport and slowly slid westward to West End before crossing over this flat narrow sandspit. This was the perfect chance to measure sustained wind speeds in nearly open ocean conditions. But , as noted by several others and the NOAA, the data from SPGF1 stopped at midnight with top recorded winds of under 80 mph. Yet another missing key data point.
redacted
…and in other news
Climate change keeps killer hurricane off shore
No doubt caused by the huge amount of additional transpiration from the record level harvests this year.
Oh my. All charts and records regarding climate can be called arbitrary. The Warmists, who are the kings of cherry-picking conveniently cherry-pick those charts and graphs they like, and whine and complain about those (like the hurricane drought) which don’t go their way, whining that they are “arbitrary”. And for good measure (as predicted) they throw in their logically fallacious Appeals to Emotion argument, crying “boo-hoo, what about Haiti?” Like clockwork.
The hurricane drought is scientifically unimportant and more of a political talking point. In this case, it can be used as a gateway to point out that overall hurricane activity has been flat or down and that forecasts of doom have not a shred of observational backing.
It reminds me of the arguments that “8 of the last ten years have been …. fill in the blank” that alarmists propagate. True maybe, but not scientifically important. It is used as a gateway to a broader discussion.
Matthew finally made landfall today but only as a category 1 hurricane:
Matthew makes landfall in South Carolina, forecast to stay offshore of North Carolina.
Kirkman Whitford
Posted: Saturday, October 8, 2016 11:01 am | Updated: 11:36 am, Sat Oct 8, 2016.
“MIAMI ā Hurricane Matthew made landfall southeast of McClellanville, S.C., but the National Hurricane Center is forecasting it will turn away to the east, staying offshore of North Carolina.
The NHC issued a public advisory at 11 a.m. today. According to the advisory, Matthew is a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale. Itās located about 55 miles south-southwest of Myrtle Beach, S.C. and about 100 miles southwest of Cape Fear. Matthew has maximum sustained winds of about 75 mph and is moving northeast at 12 mph. Its minimum central barometric pressure is 28.56 inches.”
http://www.carolinacoastonline.com/news_times/article_23670ed4-8d68-11e6-a290-b3794e545220.html
So we still haven’t had a hurricane to make landfall to the continental United states as a major cat 3 to 5 storm in over a decade. This needs an explanation of why it is that major storms either veer off when approaching the eastern U.S. coast or weakens significantly to lower than category 3 by the time they make landfall.
Bob Clark
Since the official hurricane definition is sustained wind at 74 mph or more, this may mean that Matthew might actually qualify as the weakest hurricane to make landfall in the US.
And yes, I’ve been in Cat. 1 hurricanes myself, so I know that a 75 mph wind can be quite dangerous.
What is this ‘about’ language in the windspeed comment in the article? Somewhere, they had to have measured it, and that would be a specific number, not an ‘about’…
“about” = we have the actual reading and it is BELOW 75 but we desire to claim it was a hurricane.
I bet that the part that made landfall had sub-hurricane wind speeds…
I agree. It’s a tricky thing isn’t it? A storm of supposed Category x makes landfall, i.e the centre crosses the coast, but the only Category x winds are out at sea where they are estimated rather than measured, and over the land only Category x-1 or x-2 is actually recorded. Is there an agreed way of defining it?
Yes, for the older storms NOAA will use the x-1 or x-2, for the newer ones they use x. [/sarc ]
Rich.
I out in a sarc and /sarc around the last sentence there, but enclosed in angle brackets, which turns out to be a mistake.
Rich.
Final fling for the (UK) evening: Nicole is suddenly looking much better organized on satellite photos. It’d be funny if she threw a wobbly and aimed at Florida next week…
Rich.
She may well be Cat1 or Cat2 hurricane-strength when passing close by the Queen’s Bermuda on Wednesday night before becoming an extratropical storm near the realm this time next week. Been a contrary madam by standing up to pretty strong wind shear thus far, so expect fairly rapid strengthening given the chance from Monday to Wednesday.
Even if Matthew made a landfall when it was Cat3 or higher, the drought wouldn’t go away. It would just end. But it’d need more strong hurricanes to appear and make a landfall to return to conditions that were here before, and way, way more (with no signs of that having tendency to happen) to get into anything ‘worse’ than it used to be.
In my opinion, the drought (and related general eastward shift to hurricane trajectories) can be considered a sign of climate change. It’s just not the ‘worse than we thought’ kind of sign.
Every scientific standard is “arbitrary” in its own way. (eg. should the number of degrees between water freezing and boiling be 100 or 180?) What makes them meaningful is when they are used in a consistent manner. This is why people of good will have a hard time when the Appell’s of the world want to change the definitions to avoid results they don’t like.
Apparently, despite the central pressure rising from 967mb to 981mb between 11am and 8pm Eastern, there continued throughout that time a very small area of minimal hurricane-force (75mph) winds offshore to the south. I don’t think so.
I’ve given NHC the benefit of the doubt in the past, but they seen to be stretching this one out a little toooo long. They will often maintain previous storm strengths in reports in lieu of better data for the sake of continuity (whether deepening or weakening is suspected), but not in the face of a 13mb change and not when restrengthening is not forecast. Matthew’s centre is now moving well away from the coast, and wind shear has ripped the mid- and upper-level circulation away from the low-level centre. No way is this a ‘cane anymore.
Either Mr Knapp at the NHC thinks people will stop listening to warnings the moment it is downgraded to a tropical storm, or someone has leant on him to keep his team’s thumbs on the dial. Either way, he risks loss of credibility. Not good.
P.S. Anybody reminded of a certain storm four years ago that was exploited for political effect just before an election? Expect Barry and Billary to pop up in waders blaming that evil CO2 for the f!ooding.
PPS It’s not beyond all possibility that the main structure of Matthew gets carried away in the westerlies while the low-level centre performs the previously-forecast loop and rebuilds some, before going over Florida and into the Gulf, depending on how steering flow develops.
And still the 11pm Eastern update has it as a hurricane. It’s pretty much unravelled now on satellite imagery and it’s pushing it to call it a tropical cyclone anymore.
Still, hope y’all on the Delmarva peninsula have plenty of sandbags or are on higher ground, as your turn to get a thorough soaking has arrived I’m afraid. The rain in the Carolinas should be easing to torrential now…
A day later, and the loop-de-loop is gone from the earth.nullschool model. Florida looks in the clear.
It is no longer about climate or weather or really anything to do with the natural sciences. It does not matter whether the climate starts a long period of cooling from now on – it will be simply argued away by the climate cronies and as unstable climate dynamics resulting from man made global warming or something equally pithy. The CAGW lie was always controlled from the centre by political “scientists” of the neo-Marxist-cum-Fascist variety (aka the “Globalists”) who now have control of most governments of the former western liberal democracies. Scientists were used merely to give it an air of (in)credibility.
It is the centre-piece of the NWO tyrants. Control energy and control of everyone and everything follows. Let’s hope Clinton fails in her bid for the WH. There will be no return to sanity, reason and truth if she prevails.
What happened to the hurricane? Wasn’t it suppose to loop out in the ocean and come back? That was the projection from a model. And we believe, oh so believe models…. after all, my access to a supercomputer is limited. I mean why would I think the system would be pulled north ? It is a little further east than I thought. It must be that thing that doesn’t exist anymore, a cold front or something…
When the canary in the coal mine springs back to life, more Arctic ice, then the CAGW people will point to increased hurricane activity. And the declining Arctic ice will be a long forgotten subject, not really relevant. I mean, what does damage, Arctic ice or hurricanes where a lot of people live ? I can see how this is going to progress ( I should cut and paste this argument ) ” yea, but 10 years ago you were in dire straits that the Arctic was going to be ice free, and now that the ice is expanding, all you can talk about is the return to normal for hurricanes ?”. Or when drought returns to the American midwest, or something else…. it like trying to understand infinity.
( don’t throw out your old computers, they can’t be hacked or compromised if it doesn’t have WiFi or go on the net although computer to computer is handy. You can do some amazing stuff in parallel computing. )
Or, they’ll switch to saying that increased polar ice is the consequence of a warmer climate.
The King is dead, long live the Queen. Nicole is picking up the baton in the Atlantic, with Bermudans in line. The NHC official forecast is for 90mph as it goes over/past Bermuda, but read between the lines and follow the history of this storm and you’ll see a major ‘cane building.
I was erring on the cautious side when I said a Cat 1 or 2 ‘cane would develop, but with its core now solidifying, the only thing stopping it from becoming Cat 4 is dry air in its path. It may be drawing up enough moisture to be able to punch its way through this dry air though.
Bermuda is well-defended against hurricanes, but anyone there had better be ready to double-down on defences just in case, as this has potential to be one of their rougher storms. All depends on the exact path.
In any case: “Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighesssssssssssst tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide everrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” *
* As measured on subsiding passive margin using tide gauge attached to substrate.
The dry air didn’t stop Nicole reaching Category 4…
Looking like some kind of direct hit on Bermuda around mid-morning Eastern time. Hopefully the very strongest winds will pass to the south, but she’s going to have to bend to the right a bit more to stop the eyewall passing through the beautiful place.
They’re plenty used to stormy weather, but there’s not been many like this go straight for them. Get yer boats onto dry land under shelter – the harbour won’t provide much safety from this lady.