Guest post by David Middleton
Hurricane Irma is really bad. It may be the worst storm to hit the U.S. since 1935… But it is NOT the most powerful Atlantic hurricane ever recorded. So… Why do they have to lie about this?
- Hurricane Irma, the most powerful in recorded history, makes landfall in Caribbean islands
- Category 5 Irma Becomes Most Powerful Hurricane to Form in the Atlantic Ocean
- Hurricane Irma becomes most powerful storm ever recorded in Atlantic Ocean
Hurricane Irma Is Now The Most Powerful Atlantic Ocean Storm In Recorded History
Fresh off the back of the devastating Hurricane Harvey, the US is preparing for an even more dangerous storm – Hurricane Irma.
With wind speeds of 300 kilometers per hour (185 miles per hour), Irma now ranks as the most powerful hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean. It is the second most powerful in the Atlantic basin, which includes the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico, behind Hurricane Allen in 1980 that hit the latter two with winds of 305 km/h (190 mph).
[…]
Does IFL stand for “I FLunked” Science?
Geography 101
The Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico are in the Atlantic Ocean, just as much as the Sargasso Sea is in the Atlantic Ocean.
Caribbean Sea, suboceanic basin of the western Atlantic Ocean, lying between latitudes 9° and 22° N and longitudes 89° and 60° W. It is approximately 1,063,000 square miles (2,753,000 square km) in extent. To the south it is bounded by the coasts of Venezuela, Colombia, and Panama; to the west by Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico; to the north by the Greater Antilles islands of Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico; and to the east by the north-south chain of the Lesser Antilles, consisting of the island arc that extends from the Virgin Islands in the northeast to Trinidad, off the Venezuelan coast, in the southeast. Within the boundaries of the Caribbean itself, Jamaica, to the south of Cuba, is the largest of a number of islands.
Gulf of Mexico
The Gulf of Mexico is a smaller part of the Atlantic Ocean, but it is the ninth largest body of water in the world.
[…]
Describing Irma as the most powerful Atlantic hurricane ever recorded is like calling Ted Williams the all-time American league home run leader because he hit the most home runs at Fenway Park.
Among the 24 most intense Atlantic hurricanes since 1924, Irma is currently tied for second in wind speed.
| Maximum Sustained | ||
| Storm | Year | Winds (mph) |
| Allen | 1980 | 190 |
| “Labor Day” | 1935 | 185 |
| Gilbert | 1988 | 185 |
| Wilma | 2005 | 185 |
| Irma | 2017 | 185 |
| Mitch | 1998 | 180 |
| Rita | 2005 | 180 |
| “Cuba” | 1932 | 175 |
| Janet | 1955 | 175 |
| Camille | 1969 | 175 |
| David | 1979 | 175 |
| Andrew | 1992 | 175 |
| Katrina | 2005 | 175 |
| Dean | 2007 | 175 |
| “Cuba” | 1924 | 165 |
| Isabel | 2003 | 165 |
| Ivan | 2004 | 165 |
| Hattie | 1961 | 160 |
| Hugo | 1989 | 160 |
| “Bahamas” | 1929 | 155 |
| Floyd | 1999 | 155 |
| Igor | 2010 | 155 |
| Opal | 1995 | 150 |
| Gloria | 1985 | 145 |
And tied for 12th place according to atmospheric pressure:
| Storm | Year | Minimum Atmospheric |
| Pressure (hPa) | ||
| Wilma | 2005 | 882 |
| Gilbert | 1988 | 888 |
| “Labor Day” | 1935 | 892 |
| Rita | 2005 | 895 |
| Allen | 1980 | 899 |
| Camille | 1969 | 900 |
| Katrina | 2005 | 902 |
| Mitch | 1998 | 905 |
| Dean | 2007 | 905 |
| “Cuba” | 1924 | 910 |
| Ivan | 2004 | 910 |
| Irma | 2017 | 913 |
| Janet | 1955 | 914 |
| “Cuba” | 1932 | 915 |
| Isabel | 2003 | 915 |
| Opal | 1995 | 916 |
| Hugo | 1989 | 918 |
| Gloria | 1985 | 919 |
| Hattie | 1961 | 920 |
| Floyd | 1999 | 921 |
| Andrew | 1992 | 922 |
| “Bahamas” | 1929 | 924 |
| David | 1979 | 924 |
| Igor | 2010 | 924 |
“The Most Powerful Atlantic Ocean Storm In Recorded History” meme fits the narrative: Global warming is causing hurricanes to become more severe… Another lie.
Hurricanes are not increasing in severity
The National Hurricane Center’s hurricane climatology page has a handy list of Atlantic Basin tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes from 1851-2014. There is no statistically meaningful trend in hurricane frequency or severity.
While there might be a somewhat statistically significant increase in the number of tropical storms (R² = 0.2274), this could simply be due improvements in the detection and identification of storms at sea… There is no statistically meaningful trend in the numbers of hurricanes or major hurricanes.
There are also no statistically meaningful trends in the rates at which tropical storms are “blossoming” into hurricanes or major hurricanes:
Records are made to be broken
Irma came very close to breaking a wind speed record. So what?
The probability, pn(1), that the nth observation of a series xm= x1, x2, … xn has a higher value than the previous observations [pn(1) = Pr(xn > xi |i < n)] can be expressed as:
pn(1)= 1/n
provided the values in series are iid random variables.
In 1941, Ted Williams had a .406 batting average. He was the last major league baseball player to hit over .400. While each at bat had its own independent probability, if Ted Williams had 5 at bats in a game, he probably had 2 base hits. While Irma has less than a 1% chance of breaking Allen’s wind speed record, the sum of individual probabilities since 1924 indicate that it’s about time for that record to fall.
See sheet 1 of the following spreadsheet for expected record calculations:
How did we ever survive the Medieval Warm Period?
If warmer waters inevitably lead to more severe hurricanes… How did humanity survive the Medieval Warm Period? Or the Minoan Warm Period? There must have been Category 9 hurricanes every year in 1000 BC!!! (/SARC)
,
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Irma just been downgraded to Cat 3
Floridians Rejoice !
quote from Sky news TV, can’t find additional confirmation, hence take with large bag of salt.
Is Irma now unprecedented in being downgraded from a Cat 5 to a Cat 3 further east in the Atlantic Ocean than any storm on record? /Sarc
Confirmation from another source is necessary.
According to NHC, it’s still a Cat 5. Some articles predict that it will be a Cat 3 or 4 when and if it makes landfall in Florida or a tropical storm when and if it makes landfall in the Carolinas.
With all chatter going on it is possible that the Sky made a mistake, if so lesson the learned: “Vuk always check with an alternative source.”
Most likely they looked at the update for Jose which has MSW of 120 mph.
Irma still being reported as MSW of 175 mph but that appears to be based on one 10 second peak reading at 2500 m altitude when the recon goes through eyewall.
Dropsondes still showing surface winds at the eyewall in the 120 kt range.
Fl, regarding the dropsondes, are they stationary for a one minute sustained reading?
I think you’ll find that it’s Jose that is cat3, Irma is still cat5.
It is a dangerous storm because of it’s track, not anything special about it. It will be strong enough, for long enough to develop a large surge, and have large waves riding on top of that surge. If it continues on this track, there will be widespread damage from this surge. The winds are far less dangerous, and we can effectively limit the damage due to wind. We are not there on storm surge defenses, and sooner or later we are going to get a direct hit on a major population. Let’s hope for a turn to the east that spares South Beach, and more time to think about how ready we are for a direct hit.
Eye is about 30 miles from Cockburn Town (‘Coburn’) Grand Turk, max wind speed recorded there so far about 82m.p.h.
That seems to be it as far as Grand Turk is concerned, heading for Providenciales at the moment (19:30 AST) where the wind speed is about 65 m.p.h. and rising.
Nigel, Am seeing the highest wind at Providenciales as 39MPH.
Following via – https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=IPROVIDE35#history
Also have noted that many NOAA buoys in the area have seemed to stop reporting.
More RUM!!!! 😉
Duane, when ” news reports” throughout the media are hyping Irma as the worst ever… and blaming CO2, while not even mentioning as strong or stronger Atlantic ocean basin storms or the relative shortness of satellite observations and even flight observations, then this post is both accurate and cogent for correcting the hype.
Due to the long open waters this is an ” annular, hurricane, which gives it it’s power. These occur in even cooler waters. As the storm brushes PR and then Cuba you will and are seeing less symmetry in the water vapor wrap around the eye. ( the eye is less centered)
Dave, you seem to have completely missed the point of your essay. You also seem to need a refresher course in school physics.
You state that Irma is not the most powerful hurracane recorded.
First you give a list of wind speeds for a number of hurracanes. The dimensions of speed are distance/time for me is m/s
For you miles per hour OK thats good
You then have a list of measured pressures. Dimensions are in milibars which for me become pascal, or newtons per meter squared.
Now then you talk about the most powerful hurracane. Now power is measured in watts not miles per hour or milibars. Watts up with that
Bad science. That is a fail for schoolboy science project. Sorry no proof of supposition presented.
Speed is not power. Pressure(or really in this case pressure difference)is not power.
The “power” of tropical cyclones is expressed through maximum sustained wind speed (mi/hr, kts or km/h) and/or minimum atmospheric pressure (inches of Hg, milibars or hectopascals). The Saffir-Simpson index is based on wind speed.
A more physics-oriented meaurement is Accumulated Cyclone Energy, which is derived from wind speed.
The claim that Irma is the most powerful Atlantic hurricane ever recorded is based on its Saffir-Simpson rating… which is based on wind speed.
This is how the severity, intensity and powerfulness of hurricanes are expressed.
And… the word, “power” does not appear in my post.
Definition of “powerful”…
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/powerful
Irma is a very powerful hurricane.
There is also the size of Irma as it compares to other hurricanes. It’s 785 miles across, roughly the size of Texas. I don’t know how that compares to prior hurricanes, but it’s quite large.
Something for vuk…….references to cat 4. And pictures with buildings standing. Even some signage still on top of store fronts….http://www.smh.com.au/world/hurricane-irma-death-toll-rises-as-it-tears-through-caribbean-20170907-gyd5tu.html.
Thanks for the reply. No power is measured in watts.
A low calibre bullet can be faster than a say a bunch of buckshot but there may be more power in the buckshot. That is not to say which is the most destructive.
Accumulated energy is closer to power as I assume that it is power times time. It fails to represent the power since a short lived powerful cyclone would come lower than a a less powerful but long lived one
It’s sloppy science and sloppy writing.
Power is power. Energy is energy. Speed is speed. Pressure differences are pressure differences.
If you are going to present a thesis please be accurate and precise.
Get a dictionary and learn how to read.
Daventry Websters says Powerful –having great power, see I have a dictionary.
Stop being petty. My point is that you are taking intensity and passing it off as power.
Intensity, the quality or state of being intense Webster’s
Ps Cambridge says having lots of power,
Quote the exact passage in the post where I misused either the word power or powerful.
Excellent summary.
Please don’t confuse us with the facts.
Please don’t confuse us with the facts.
Good thing those 250,000 people that died in Indonesia were poor. At least Irma has a shot at the most costly natural disaster in all of history.
Wind speed and pressure are measures of intensity of a storm . Camille was very intense.But it was not very extensive. Katrina fell to a cat 3 on US landfall yet it was much more extensive and from what I gather more destructive. Now as to power I do not have the figures for either storm . But at a guess I would put Katrina being more powerful. You are measuring intensity not POWER.
I’ve got a dictionary.
Intensity is only an indication of power.A 10 watt bulb will be a far more intense source of energy than a 1000 watt room heater. You can tell that because the black body radiation has gone into the visible whereas the room heater is emitting in the infra red.
Sorry you have got power wrong.
“Powerful” is an adjective. It is not synonymous with “power” as it is used in physics.
Every appearance of the word “powerful” in the post was in quotes of media headlines and articles. Apart from the assertion that Irma was the most powerful Atlantic hurricane ever recorded, the use of powerful was grammatically correct.
Quote the exact passage from the post where I misused the word “power.”
Perhaps the media are more on the ball than you give credit to. Or they are repeating what the scientists are telling them. Power is a measure which takes into account the extent. The keep on telling this storm is big and intense. Therfore this is pretty close to the scientific power.
Correct:
A joule is a measurement of energy (or work). watts/sec
A watt is a measurement of power.
As I tried to explain earlier in this thread hurricane Irma was earlier today at 100 TJ (100xE12). In comparison Katrina was at 120TJ at landfall. I suspect Irma will gain energy prior to landfall.
Just checked and found that hurricane Irma is now at 113 TJ on September 8 (local hurricane time) https://twitter.com/hwind
https://www.livescience.com/60308-hurricane-irma-what-category-5-means.html
For a discussion of the hurricane potential damage indices see:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11069-016-2587-3?no-access=true
please get your concepts right: power is energy per unit of time, so Watt is Joule/second, or equivalently Joule is Watts * second, i.e. the time-integrated power.
It must be remembered that a post such as this is not meant to lessen the weather event. (A category doesn’t sound like much…but if it hits your house, you don’t care.)
This is to counter the CAGW-generated “hype”.
Man didn’t cause it. Mann didn’t stall Harvey over Houston (though he tried 8-).
Irma is bad but not “unprecedented”, even with Jose behind her.
Typo…yet again…
“(A category doesn’t sound like much”
Should be:
“(A category1 doesn’t sound like much”
Dave, one can always get a dictionary to give a layman’s definition. Powerful having power.
Power is energy per unit time. For scientists that watts.
Learn how to read.
Oxford dictionary
Powerful —- having great power.
There there 3 dictionaries have the same
—–
Quote the passage in the post where I misused either the word power or powerful.
Merriam-Webster
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/powerful
Dictionary.com
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/powerful
Cambridge English dictionary
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/powerful
Collins English dictionary
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/powerful
Thesaurus.com
http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/powerful
Now… Quote the exact passage in the post where I misused either the word power or powerful.
Webster definition,
Powerful having great power,
Again power is measured in watts
Quote the exact passage in the post where I misused either the word “power’ or “powerful.”
In the title.
Dilbert’s Salary Theorem (why engineering won’t make you rich)
Knowledge is power and Time is money
Power = Work/Time
Hence
Knowledge = Work/Money and Money = Work/Knowledge
So, the less you know , the more you make.
THE “AL GORE” FORMULA!
(Of course, money isn’t everything. Guess they has a lot to learn.)
It also means that if you want lost of money work is more important than knowledge.
L-Space bookmark. c/o Terry Pratchert.
Baloney! Next thing you’ll tell us is the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea are parts of the Indian Ocean.
Poppycock!
,Dave you quote powerful in the title and then spend the rest talking about intensity and have a pecking order on these. There that is your misquote. As I stated in my first post you do not work out the power of any of these storms.
You only define powerful after the article when challenged.
Three dictionaries state in their first definition that powerful is having great power.
Not one states intensity.
Power is measured in watts for a very good reason because it measures extent and speed.
You have only quoted intensity and have missed the point of your own title completly
you are getting personal and insulting, looks like you now see your mistake.
(You have been repeatedly asked to provide the quote,but you do not.) MOD
Quote the exact passage in the post where I misused either the word power or powerful.
The title, you then go on to use velocities and Pressure and equate these o power. Wrong
Quote the exact passage from the post where I misused either power or powerful. Try to comprehend the fact that “powerful” is an adjective. It is not synonymous with the word “power,” which I never used in either post.
Furthermore, almost all of the uses of the word “powerful” were quotations from media reports. However, the use of the word “powerful” as an adjective was 100% grammatically correct.
Here endeth the remedial grammar lessons.
Mod just read the title that is the quote, mod I suggest that you censure someone is iliterate and read a dictionary but you won’t.
[As soon you write a legible sentence, we will consider whatever request it is you are trying make. -mod]
There are a number of papers that look at prehistoric proxies for hurricanes such as sediment dispersal. They find that there are ‘wreckers” far worse than anything seen in the historical record. These papers have caused periodic soul searching among insurance execs every time we have an active hurricane year.
When the Spaniards came to the Gulf Coast they found few if any indians living near the coast.
Thanks for posting this. I was remembering back to Gilbert in 88 and I thought at least that one was stronger. I distinctly remember watching on the news where at one point it had two eye walls. Never saw that before and I dont think i’ve ever seen it since. A central pressure of 888 also means to me that the winds were probably stronger than what they officially have listed.
I think the most relevant comparison is the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935. It’s pressure was much lower than Irma being the third lowest in history, and it winds were calculated to have been between 186.4 mph – 188.7 mph. Not only did it hit the US as a cat 5, it was the most intense hurricane to make landfall in the US ever. Also it hit Florida while still a cat 5, which made it 1 of 2 cat 5s to hit that state. But most important it happened in 1935. May Florida not see its like again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1935_Labor_Day_hurricane
The beauty of the fossil fuel industry and the even more pathetic doubt science that produces pages like this is nothing left of ridiculous. Like the people that believe the bible is real the same morons seem to think that we are having no effect on this planet. Has anyone ever noticed that the biggest doubters are usually uneducated backwater hillbillies that have traveled little further than there local Walmart however have such informed and god dammit definitive proof, like the stupidity of religion that we are all subjected to putting up with have to have websites like this pile of dog excrement to enjoy as well.
Burn burn burn baby. Keep going as the planet will outlast all of you and hopefully will swallow your house first so you can crown believing you played no part in this. Who cares about a 5mph difference in wind speed or a label. The simple FACT is that the warmest temperatures are not made up. Nor will be the dead bodies of the doubters floating into the swamp hopefully as soon as possible. Gee i wonder of there is also a way to u explain the death of 30% of the great barrier reef. However i imagine that 90% of the idiom that thinks there worldly and educated don’t even know about that or think it will come back just for them.
Pathetic.
(You are waaaay off topic) MOD
I think that Greg above has a point. If you make a plot of y=EXP(x) over a range of 1 to 50 you get a monotonically increasing series with an overall increase of 25 orders of magnitude. If you do a linear regression, you get an R squared of 0.134. This is less than the number for the hurricane data. But there is clearly a steady and massive increase. You can drive R squared as low as you like by extending this series. So R squared goes down as the increase in the series rises
Common sense tells me that there is a real and significant increase in this data. I don’t know what formal statistical test would be applicable, but I don’t think R squared is it. Not as excel calculates it in any case.
Typhoon Tip was the most powerful Hurricane of all time and IT WAS NOT NEAR AMERICA.
@morgs640 No. Take your petulance down about 5 notches, put down the torch and change the diaper. This isn’t another excuse for you to get in a tissy about “America trying to claim everything” so hush, take your bottle and listen.
Even though Typoons, Hurricanes and Cyclones are the same thing, they are absolutely not the same thing at the same time. Sure, yes…maybe Typhoon Tip was the most powerful TYPHOON of all time, but TYPHOON Tip was NOT the most powerful HURRICANE of all time. Typhoons develop in a specific area of the ocean on a very specific area of the world. Hurricanes develop in a specific area of the ocean on ANOTHER very specific area of the world.
So, you see…Pacific Typhoon is not Atlantic Hurricane. Typhoon is to Hurricane as Watermelon is to Ford Pinto. Your statement is completely incorrect.