From this imagery earlier, it certainly looks like it. It is certainly wider than the Florida Peninsula, and it’s diameter looks to be as large as Florida is long.
From the National Hurricane Center at 11PM EDT tonight:
Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 75 miles (120 km) from the center, and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 185 miles (295 km).
From: http://www.netstate.com/states/geography/fl_geography.htm
Florida is 500 miles long and 160 miles wide at its most distant points.
That includes the Keys and the panhandle. Using Google Earth, I measured the length of the Florida peninsula (minus the Keys) and came up with ~391 miles.
Measuring the size of Irma, based on the densest cloud bands, it shows ~528 miles in diameter from outer dense cloud bands through the eye. I also did a measurement across the panhandle from Tampa to Cape Canaveral and came up with ~139 miles.
With hurricane tropical storm force winds extending “outward up to 185 miles” according to NHC, that means that if the storms holds in strength, the entire width of the Florida panhandle may get tropical storm force winds (39–73 mph, 63–118 km/h). That’s sobering, especially in light of this track projection:
https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/905907316104585216
Irma is certainly bigger than hurricane Andrew, seen here in 1992:
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
A lot of thoughts and prayers around hoping and praying Irma will miss Florida. Well Florida is only about 100 – 125 miles wide so run-off only needs to go 50 – 60 miles max to get to the ocean. (I’ve excluded storm surge as there will be storm surge with any landfall.)
Now consider the prayers to spare Florida and landfall occurs Carolina or northern gulf coast and moves inland. There will be storm surge and there will be heavy rain but much of the storms flooding will be delivered from areas up to a couple of hundred of miles away and in areas not designed/prepared for such weather events. It will hit the drainages in many cases back to the region of landfall.
If you choose to live in Florida expect major storms. If you live in the northern states expect blizzards. If you live in the mid-Atlantic expect both, Mississippi river valley get their tornadoes. But why shouldn’t Florida take the hit and tame this nasty bitch rather than dumping it on someone else? They should expect it and be prepared.
Hope, pray, or whine and cry, but weather comes with the territory. Just deal with it!
Actually, not just Florida, but anywhere on the Eastern Seaboard should expect hurricanes. The SE state, ie GA, SC and NC, can even expect powerful storms.
Providence, RI built a surge barrier after the terrible hurricanes of preceding decades, but NYC didn’t, and paid the price when Tropical Storm Sandy came ashore at high tide.
“The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the eye of Hurricane Irma passed over the British Virgin Islands with wind gust of up to 110 mph to the west at Buck Island in the U.S. Virgin Islands.” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4861184/Shocking-scale-destruction-Tortola-revealed.html
Is this where Branson survived the 185 mph winds of Irma?
Hurricanes are simply not related to global warming, which by the way we’ve seen little of for a decade or so, if we indeed follow the narrative, this storm is technically been worsened by climate remaining about the same as it was 20 years ago! How do we figure that, Headline: “Cyclone Irma worsened by global sameness”. Nevertheless, they keep trying, but now just a reminder AGW for a doubling of CO2 (which we’ve not seen yet) is supposed to inclusive of feedbacks contribute 3.7 Watts per square meter, currently the imbalance is supposed to be 0.6W per square metre, so that means it adds around 0.6/1100 or 0.00054 (0.054%) to peak insolation at the equator, responsible for ocean warming. That’s about enough to turn a 915mb storm like Irma to a 914.95 mb storm. So this narrative cannot be justified by the energy. This storm is caused by the sun, and not the piddling energy that might (sorta kinda) be added by 0.6W per square meter of diffracted energy that hasn’t changed in the last decade!
We’ve seen little global warming for a decade or so??!!? Please tell that to the disappearing glaciers! We lived near the Columbian icefields for 10 years and witnessed the massive Athabasca glacier recede as much in the past ten years as it had done in the previous 100+ years.
None of which has anything to do with CO2 scattering 0.6 Watts per square metre either. There has been no significant measurable global warming for decades. All the emotive claptrap about glaciers and whatnot doesn’t change the fact that melting glaciers costs 344kJ per kg and 0.6Watts per square metre isn’t going to melt much. 0.6W per square meter is around 1 Christmas tree light in a square meter column of air 5km high above the glacier. Meanwhile, at the other end of the world the glaciers are growing.
I did a calculation. At 2am EDT, the center of Hurricane Irma was 66.2 mi from Key West and it had increased intensity back to a CAT 4 with sustained wind speed of 130 mph. What is confusing is that, at the same time, the sustained wind speed in Key West was only 64 mph. With Irma being so large and so close to Key West, why isn’t the wind speed in Key West at LEAST at hurricane force of 74 mph?