Guest post by David Middleton
Hurricane Maria is a really bad storm. This criticism of the media’s coverage of it is in no way meant to dismiss, disregard or devalue the harm that this storm will bring to many people.
With Irma we had variations of the following headlines:
- Most Powerful Hurricane Ever
- Most Powerful Atlantic Hurricane Ever
- Most Powerful Atlantic Hurricane Ever… Apart From More Powerful Atlantic Hurricanes Ever
- Most Powerful Atlantic Hurricane Ever… In This Particular Part of the Atlantic Ocean
Now we have…
Hurricane Maria is following Irma’s path and getting stronger
By Susannah Cullinane and Holly Yan, CNN
Updated 4:05 AM ET, Mon September 18, 2017
[…]
Screen capture of CNN video that accompanied the article:
And from the Beeb…
Hurricane Maria batters Dominica as category five storm
19 September 2017
From the section Latin America & Caribbean
[…]
Maria is moving roughly along the same track as Irma, the hurricane that devastated the region this month.
[…]
Dr. Jeff Masters’ Weather Underground has a very user-friendly collection of hurricane graphics (proof that climate is not weather). Using a combination of Weather Underground and National Hurricane Center graphics, I put together a comparison of the paths of these two storms. The lack of similarity should be intuitively obvious to the most casual of observers…
Why? Why is there this obsession with Maria following the same path as Irma? Yes… That was a rhetorical question.
Hurricane Maria’s Path: Is it On the Same Track as Irma?
Tropical Storm Maria – soon to be Hurricane Maria – is taking a similar path, at least so far, as Hurricane Irma. That has a lot of people in Florida and, especially, throughout the Caribbean, on edge.
However, is Hurricane Maria really taking a similar path to Hurricane Irma? The answer is yes, in its early stages (and you can see the forecast cones for both later in this article). However, the September 18 spaghetti and forecast cone models show that Maria may then veer to the north and miss the United States and Florida completely. Be aware, though, that these are just projections, and they also preliminarily showed Irma hitting the east coast or veering out to sea before she shifted course and struck the western coast of Florida.
[…]
Maria’s path has never been similar to Irma’s. Their paths couldn’t be much more dissimilar for “likely” paths of September hurricanes…
The paths of Irma and Maria are similar in the same way that the paths of interstate highways I-10 and I-20 are similar… They go from east to west and hit some of the same States.
Other “brilliant” headlines:
- Tropical Storm Maria Following Irma’s Path Towards Florida
- Same Track as Irma? Maria Becomes Major Category 3 Hurricane
- Hurricane Maria: new models show storm on SAME PATH as Irma – DEVASTATED islands brace
- Hurricane Maria following Irma’s path: US forecasters
- Tropical Storm Maria expected to strengthen, follow similar path as Hurricane Irma
They couldn’t use the superlatives and personifications and hurricane hype and spins that were “projected” for 12 years. They got a bit constipated and ached to get them out.
This year has been sort of a laxative for them.
We know what laxatives produce.
a record flood caused by a superlatives diarrhea? 🙂
they follow the tracks that any cape verde type hurricane does follow…
Maria eyewall sustained winds are 64 knots, based on the NDBC buoy 42060 anemometer. No other reliable surface measurements available. NHC claims of Category 5 are totally bogus.
Most likely that Maria will be a small Category 1 hurricane at PR landfall.
NDBC station YABP4 (Yabucoa) will be near landfall, with anemometer height 10 meters. The sustained winds recorded at that station will likely be Category 1, with area surface damage that matches.
Google street maps of SE PR show villages with a lot of concrete walls and roofs for housing. Plenty of palm trees to use as wind speed indicators. Lots of above ground power poles, some wood, some concrete. I’d say that PR building construction practice is better than Florida in regard to tropical cyclones.
“Station 42060 went adrift on 9/19/2017 and the last report from its moored position was at 1400Z. It is still transmitting valid observation data, which continued to be reported here, but not from the location above.”
…
Reference: http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=42060
It does make one wonder if the remote sensing is not as well-calibrated as it should be.
After Irma, I asked here, and of my local NWS office, why the NHC had still not released actual, measured surface sustained wind speeds (from Harvey or Irma), especially considering that this is the sole criterion for their categorization. I still have no satisfactory answer; after some research, a few excuses, and a bit of prevarication, the NWS office wrote, “we don’t know”…
I can’t quite work out how the raw data is used to derive the advisory ratings. There are three separate measuring systems for the recon aircraft:
1. A flight level wind speed measured as 30 second average and peak reading over a 10 second interval.
2. A surface estimate from SFMR radar which measures emissivity of the surface. The principal being higher wind speeds result in more froth on the surface which can be measured across 6 separate GHz+ bands in the radar.
3. A dropsonde measurement which is jettisoned from the aircraft and falls over a 3-4 minute interval transmitting slices of data until it hits surface.
For all interested in monitoring the flights and their data you can check out: http://tropicalatlantic.com/recon/ which can be imported into google earth or viewed in browser on map.
The dropsonde data seemed like it should be most accurate but I’ve seen other comments suggesting it uses the GPS co-ordinates to infer wind speed and direction which seems fraught with potential inaccuracies. One of the drops from AF303 earlier today occured in the eyewall but the final resting place of the sensor was about 10 km away. Hard to calibrate the flight level readings when the plane is travelling the opposite direction of the dropsonde you are trying to calibrate too.
I’m actually surprised that the raw data is so readily available as comparing plane readings with surface stations like Yabucoa or Lime Tree Bay (http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=LTBV3) with overlays of the GOES 16 images where you can see and measure proximity to eyewall is showing a big disconnect.
I’m not advocating the advisories should be ignored but it seems a worthy task to independently derive the official sustained winds from the raw data and compare against direct surface measurements rather than simply using the largest peak recorded value from the three separate systems.
Here is a Puerto Rico station http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=frdp4 Max sustained wind 66kts. Another one on the Northern Coast: Station 41053 50kts. Southeast of Ponce, Station 42085 52kts. MGZP4 – 35kts. AROP4 – 68kts.
The measurements are quite consistent with category 1 hurricane.