While this won’t be of much comfort for those that are squarely in it’s path right now, it is a small bit of good news. Dr. Philip Klotzbach has compiled rankings of both hurricane Irma and Harvey when they made landfall. Compared to the 1935 Labor Day storm, Irma is a distant 7th, tied with the 1928 Lake Okeechobee storm.
He writes:
Table of all hurricanes with landfall pressures <= 940 mb at time of U.S. landfall.
#Irma was 929 mb and#Harvey was 938 mb.
With Irma ranked 7th, and Harvey ranked 18th, it’s going to be tough for climate alarmists to try connecting these two storms to being driven by CO2/global warming. But they’ll do it anyway.
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I turn off the audio when viewing the Weather Channel, to avoid the possibility that I will lose control and put something handy thru the TV screen. Right now they are claiming that Tampa has not seen a major hurricane since 1921. From the looks of the Hurricane Center estimates, they still won’t have seen one when Irma passes by. They estimate Irma as leaving major hurricane status less than halfway up Florida – quite a distance from Tampa.
To be fair, the claim was a direct hit. Eyewall. We know what that means because we too a direct hit from Wilma in 2005. Being just 15 miles away can make a huge difference. Andrew made a direct hit on Homestead, yet south Miami just 27 miles away had almost no damage because Andrew was spun up so tight and small.
Do far it is clear, Irma and Harvey; the two weakest ground based CAT 4 landfall storms in history!
Zero people should say I am minimizing the pain inflicted on people from this storm. I am not. I just want the facts on ground based wind readings to compare to past storms.
So why isn’t Gilbert 1988 even on the list?
IMO cuz it weakened over Mexico before hitting Texas.
As this thread is newer, I am just posting three of my recent comments from the older “maue expert” thread:
—
If people want to keep an eye on winds speeds recorded by buoys, use the link http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/radial_search.php?lat1=25.0n&lon1=80.0w&uom=E&dist=150&ot=A&time=8 .
Fowey Rock, FWYF1, see http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=FWYF1 , has been recording the highest speeds for the last few hours, between 60 and 70 knots, i.e. Category 1 Saffir-Simpson. Interestingly Fowey Rock is on the Miami side. Hurricanes going north typically have the highest winds on the east side, so perhaps, emphasize perhaps, Naples isn’t in too much danger as the eye approaches it. There could be higher winds on land of course just to the east of the eye.
Does anyone have a link to the nearest NWS station to Naples?
Rich.
Sorry, I just saw bw’s posting https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/09/09/hurricane-expert-maue-irma-may-bomb-to-cat-5-again/comment-page-1/#comment-2606353 . There he also talks about Fowey Rock, and the fact that the anemometer height is 44m, well above the official 10m level.
Rich.
Homestead Air Base station KHST, south of Miami and not too far from the sea, stopped reporting winds after 11am having had a gust of 62mph out of a sustained wind of 28mph.
Enquiring minds want to know: did a gust take it out or is the NWS trying to starve its customers, you the people, of accurate information?
Rich.
And their estimate for 10m height is 52kts, which is below hurricane strength.
The badness of hurricanes besides how fast the winds and how low the pressure should also include where they strike and how long they linger. This one’s going skate up the Florida coast and do a lot of damage as opposed to going straight inland and decaying to a lesser status.
So no where in Florida has CAT 4 winds been observed? Yet we don’t hear it reported? Why?
TV/cable ratings.
“…its path…”
I’d love to see apostrophe usage rules posted prominently here. Not to mention the respective definitions of “affect” and “effect.”
Some errors are from autofill on phones, not caught before sending.
Lots of definitions would be needed besides “effect” and “affect”, plus correct usage and spelling. I just let them go, whether obvious grammatical, spelling and usage mistakes or only typos.
Following my gripe about non-functioning NWS sites, I shall now gripe about non-functioning webcams in the Naples FL area. I’ve tried several, and none are working. Do webcam owners turn them off when a storm is approaching, just in case they get damaged? It would be quite interesting to see a car (say) being blown into a webcam in its last moments on earth…
And I expect the insurance would pay.
Naples does seem to be in the current path of the eye, so observations there could be crucial in understanding the nature of this hurricane.
Rich.
but Irma was considerably stronger BEFORE it got to US shores, wasn’t it?
How’s it rank if you include it in its ‘highest’ state?
(This is exactly what those alarmists have been trying to alarm you about – and they were right, weren’t they? All this frantic effort to try and claim that 2 truly severe weather events are ordinary)
they were right, weren’t they?
They (and you) bet on the same losing horse for 12 years, and when the horse manages to win ONE time, they’re supposed to get credit?
Don’t make me laugh. See Harkin1’s post at 8:17.
You don’t “rank” it Griff because we have no reliable long term data for wind speeds of offshore hurricanes, so what would we “rank” it against? The frantic effort you refer to is merely trying to keep some kind of sense of proportion in the dessemination of “information” in times of crisis and natural disaster. We don’t need hype and horse puckey, particularly from government funded agencies who are supposed to simply record and report what they measure. As the MSM beclowns itself more and more, rational people just tune them out.
Griff,
It still ranks lowly.
Outside the US it has to compete with the most extreme storms, like Labor Day, Camille, Allen, Gilbert. Rita and Wilma, all 900 hPa or lower. Plus all those between 900 and Irma’s pressure.
You could easily have looked up these facts yourself.
BTW, did you notice that yesterday 2017 Arctic sea ice extent surpassed 2008, making this year the seventh lowest since 1979, after 2012, 2007, 2016, 2015, 2011 and now 2008? Good chance of beating 2010, too.
Don’t you feel foolish for making such the ridiculous prediction that this year was “sure” to be the lowest Evah! The low record of 2012 is liable to stand for years, if not decades, at least.
And yet the Antarctic was at its lowest
Griff,
Alarmists were right about nothing.
Irma wasn’t any stronger at any point in its path than many other hurricanes from long, long ago.
Nothing is happening in earth’s climate or WX that hasn’t happened over and over again before.
The null hypothesis can’t be rejected. Indeed, it’s the only hypothesis for which there is evidence.
If you look at Irma’s rank as its maximum, it would tie with Wilma in 2005. And in 2005 we would have four cat 4 hurricanes if you look at maximum (Dennis, Katrina, Rita, and Wilma) as compared to two for 2017 (Harvey and Irma). So yes, the 12 year streak is broken, but we’re nowhere near as bad as we were just prior to the streak.
Historically, the strength of a hurricane is unknown prior to hitting land.
PS, almost all storms are stronger before they hit land. This is nothing new and not a surprise to everyone other than you.
Griffie, not even wrong.
Yeah, barely cat 4 North of Barbuda…
“and they were right, weren’t they?”
No, they were absolutely nothing of the sort.
And even if they were, it had absolutely ZERO to do with man’s CO2 output.
Will you EVER make a post that isn’t at best disingenuous, mostly totally mendacious?
No go and apologise for slandering Dr. Crockford.
Assume hurricanes are getting stronger and more frequent. We have taken steps to compensate for that though Houston suggests there is more to do. Our ‘eyes’ are better (using satellites). Our predictions are better. Our knowledge is better. Our communication methods of the dangers are better. As Luddites we could have never have developed fast enough computers for hurricane predictions and everything that goes into our weather satellites and it might be suggested we’d be at greater risk from hurricanes.
IMO there was enough info to have ordered evacuations from Houston, but the mayor didn’t. Shades of Katrina, when the mayor of NO and governor of LA refused to order evacuation or seek federal aid in time.
The problem in Houston is development and subsidence. The WX pattern which kept the storm over the same area, not much people can do about that.
Smarter development could somewhat lessen the impacts of heavy precipitation. Might also improve their water quality and that of the nearby gulf.
More storm drains and reservoir capacity, perhaps. However it could be a long time before the combination of hurricane and blocking WX pattern recurs.
Maybe pumping water back into the ground to combat subsidence.
During the last hurricane to hit Houston, evacuation was ordered, and dozens died during that evacuation.
I suspect the mayor of Houston made the right call.
As a Houstonian, I think our Mayor is something of an idiot. But he made the right call here. Certainly evacuation of the city would have been (1) impossible without at least a week plus of lead time, (2) a waste of time and effort when the large majority of the city was not flooded, (3) resulted in far more deaths and injuries due to travel accidents than the few drowning deaths (almost all of which could have been avoided by reasonable behavior). If you watched the news channels, you might have thought all of Houston was flooded, in fact, a very small area was flooded – and a not insignificant amount of those areas had flooded before.
Well it’s OFFICIAL folks! The Weather Channel has just announced that the NWS has been downgraded to the CAT 3. LOL!
Ristivan here are 258 ground based readings in the Florida and keys…
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/radial_search.php?storm=at1
Highest gust 81 knots.
Check it out….
Set the time…
Anthony, wouldn’t it be interesting to crowdsource amateur(PWS?) wind data all along the coasts during weather events like Harvey and Irma? In particular, many amateur radio enthusiasts, who already provide emergency communications assistance in times of disaster, seem to routinely have antenna towers which would allow mounting at or close to the 10m height. Such an enormous body of information would be an incredible view of the variations in wind speeds with terrain differences, distance from coasts, storm centres etc and a useful balance to the seemingly sparse “official” numbers which always seem to disappear just when needed to counter the media silliness.
And how would you determine which data was gathered with proper instrumentation and bias adjustment?
Steve, my preference would be for weather stations at the coasts to be engineered for 200mph, and tested in a wind tunnel yearly.
Now downgraded to 120mph/Cat 3 ahead of peninsula landfall.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATCPAT1+shtml/101757.shtml
Will believers castigate politicians for funding the rebuilding of the Florida Pennisula? If Mann and Gore chalk up the devestation to GW then shouldn’t the call be to just write off the loss and never fix any storm damaged areas within 50 miles of a tidal flat. End the federal flood insurance program, repurpose those funds towards building new communities high in the a
Appalachians. Why postpone the doom a hundred years hence?
Based on an analysis of AF306 Mission #30 into IRMA (this link will probably only be valid for a while) and the raw data file (ibid), I have done an analysis (which may be incorrect).
Briefly, the only surface wind data in the raw data file are peak (10 sec) winds in knots. Readings are reported every 30 seconds. I assume it is possible to approximate 1 minute sustained surface wind estimates by averaging two consecutive 30-second readings. There are two candidates:
11:56:30 89 knots
11:57:00 110 knots
Average would be 99.5 knots or about 115 mph, barely a Cat 4.
12:07:30 86 knots
12:08:00 97
12:08:30 98
12:09:00 97
12:09:30 92
12:10:00 89
12:10:30 83
12:11:00 79
The highest pair would give a 1 minute estimate of 98.5 knots or about 113 mph, a Cat 3.
Currently, Irma is rated a Category 3. It looks like the reported ratings are based on the SFMR readings, which are estimated surface winds speeds. From the whole flight, it appears that these speeds were only seen for about 3 minutes, disregarding those estimates that were higher but that had error flags or neighboring error flags (making them estimates of peak gusts not sustained speeds.)
There was a peak gust (albeit bracketed by error flags):
13:25:30 116 knots or about 134 mph
Phil, is that not aircraft reconnaissance???
Yes
If you want ground based 475 observations go here…
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2017/09/08/the-hurricanes-return/#comment-86422
Phil, interesting data.
It raises a question I’ve had for a while – When multiple dropsondes are used, how do they select the dropsonde to report, or do they average them?
I didn’t look at dropsondes, only at SMFR readings.
It’s hitting Naples right now pretty good but no sustained hurricane-force winds to be found:
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=npsf1&unit=E&tz=STN
Sustained winds 43 knots at 4.18pm EDT recorded there. Radar showed the heaviest part of the eyewall at that time. Then the center of the eye with 5 knots 30 minutes later. The trailing side of the eyewall shows 31 knots.
On cable news a NHC expert says winds are “over 100” and Irma is “Category 2”
Live video of damage in Naples shows almost no palm tree damage but some fronds down in the streets. No damage to structures visible at that location. News reporter says some power is out, but the street lights behind him are obviously still working.
Irma just made landfall by Naples http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=NPSF1
Min pressure 940, sustained wind 50mph. Not even a hurricane anymore.
Well now it is being reported as 105 mph, that is still a hurricane
Such speeds never happened. Not in 10m height. http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/obs.shtml
They lied all the time.
The NOAA website is excellent, checking wind speed in Dover Strait at Sandettie Lightship (36 knots at 06:00 GMT) brought up a red highlighted ‘Storm Special!’ link to relevant US data, these are people who enjoy their work and know its important.
It is wise to praise the people actually doing the work!
In the meantime, we in the UK are having an ‘Ahhhh – bless….’ moment about our least-favourite billionaire (Richard Branson) reporting that his tax-haven – Necker Island – has been ‘devastated’….
Its an ill wind….
Al Gore is a politician out to line his own pocket and gain more power. He is not a science and only uses data “convenient” to make his argument, and leaves out data that is “inconvenient” to him. When are the lemmings in society going to wake up and realize they have been doped?
Slipping into number 7. First they reported it was the worst in US history. Then they reported it was the second worst in the last fifty years. Now they are saying it’s number seven in US history. Which is it news casters? It’s anything you want it to be so you can grab a headline and have your three seconds of fame. Pathetic MSM reporting. Is it any wonder why people don’t trust the media any longer?
Wait I thought this storm was the worst ever and we were all going to die from the winds and waters
Pitiful leftist anti REALIST !
BoooHiss@ur momisugly “write your SSN with a Sharpie” – got hype?!
But…but….but 3 500-year storms so far!