Over the past few days, there’s been a persistent media buzz over the National Hurricane Center’s prediction of two hurricanes to hit New Orleans. Jason Dunning, a TV meteorologist at NBC2 WBBH-TV in Fort Meyers, Florida posted on Facebook: “…it would be the first time in recorded history with two hurricanes in the gulf at the same time.”
Needless to say, the post went viral. Now it appears his Facebook post has been removed.
And then there’s the ever-hyping CNN, which published the story ‘Unprecedented’ back-to-back hurricanes will target the same state, forcing evacuations in Louisiana. According to the article, the two storms, Marco and Laura, are forecast to arrive within two days of each other, making landfall somewhere between New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama as reason to say such an event is “unprecedented.”
Then there’s USA Today with this ridiculous guest commentary by opinion contributor Monica Medina:
How can Trump ignore climate crisis with twin hurricane-season storms barreling toward us?
Climate change is wreaking havoc on people’s lives right now. This month alone, not a section of the country has been spared a devastating event.
How can Trump ignore climate crisis with twin hurricane-season storms barreling toward us?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/08/24/climate-change-twin-hurricanes-confront-crisis-now-column/3424879001/
Climate change is wreaking havoc on people’s lives right now. This month alone, not a section of the country has been spared a devastating event.
Typical alarmist, confusing weather with climate for an agenda.
Dunning, CNN, and Medina are wrong, and badly so. All they had to do is look at the historical records of hurricanes to know this has happened before, and it is nothing new.
Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer commented in a Facebook post:
“When I researched the 500-year history of hurricanes hitting the New World for my Amazon Kindle book Inevitable Disaster: Why Hurricanes Can’t Be Blamed On Global Warming, I was struck by the number of cases of back-to-back hurricanes.” Adding, “… when the Hurricane Center talks about records, they are generally referring to only the last 150 years. A little over 120 years ago, Miami didn’t even exist.”
For example, in his book, Spencer cites the Twin Mobile Hurricanes In late September of 1740; two separate hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast region around Mobile, Alabama within one week of each other. These two hurricanes, together with the hurricane of Sept. 23, 1740, caused major damage to the Louisiana colony.
Finding this information isn’t difficult, and you don’t need a degree in climatology; the Twin Mobile Hurricanes of 1740 are listed in Wikipedia and in Louisiana Cajun History.
There are many other instances of back to back hurricanes hitting near the same location within a few days of each other. Besides the 1740 event, in 1933 and 1959, two tropical storms entered the Gulf of Mexico at the same time. But they were not both hurricanes at those times.
Journalists and some meteorologists seem to have this conceit that if it isn’t recorded in the modern-day record of the past 150 years, it didn’t happen. The worse conceit is the fact that they ignore just how few records we have compared to how long nature has been launching hurricanes at the Gulf Coast. Literally this has been going on for millions of years, and somehow because we have the ability to observe, track, and predict hurricanes like never before in history, it’s “unprecedented”? How many times has it happened before we were around to observe it?
Of course the idea of labeling such things as “unprecedented” goes straight to the heart of climate alarmism, because they are already blaming it on “climate change.” In the story First ever double hurricane could hit the Gulf of Mexico, Space.com made this claim: “The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that as climate change warms the oceans, strong hurricanes are likely to become more frequent than they were in previous years.”
But that’s wrong too, and the data tells us so. In Climate-at-a-Glance: Hurricanes we find there has been no increase in hurricanes as the planet has modestly warmed. Even the UN climate body known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agrees, finding no increase in the frequency or severity of hurricanes in their latest 2018 report.
What has increased is the hype over hurricanes, which started back in 2005 with former vice president turned climate activist Al Gore claiming events like Hurricane Katrina would be the new normal. Following that pronouncement, Gore’s predictions fell flat and there was an 11-year “drought” of major hurricanes hitting the United States. In fact, peer reviewed science shows hurricane activity has been decreasing since 1950.
So, don’t pay any attention to what the media says about the “unprecedented” nature of hurricanes this week. For years, the media and climate change zealots have pushed hype over facts. We would be better off ignoring the hype and focusing on facts.
This is fake news as I don’t recall back to back hurricanes before on my touch phone.
Phone coverage wasn’t as good in 1740.
I feel bound to give due credit, having quite enjoyed that lighthearted other half of your customary wit’s contribution to the bracing information flow regularly found hereabouts. Well done sir!
It’s a double deception. They discount any event before modern digital recording as ‘unreliable’ = didn’t happen, then they say “look at this terrible thing that has never happened before, and we have records going back 300 years”.
Interestingly they didn’t become hurricanes until entering the gulf. Also noteworthy there are no disturbances across the Atlantic to feed new ones https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/. As I have said before thermodynamics says air can not heat up water in any significant way. It has a minuscule heat content compared to water. Is the loop current responsible for super charging these tropical storms into hurricanes?
The HOT water in the gulf is responsible for super charging these tropical storms.
“Dunning”, really?
I guess his mate Kruger advised him to take it down.
Of course, Marco didn’t even become a hurricane. The NHC does not even track it any more.
It was a hurricane for about 10 hrs on Sunday but then completely fell apart. Its convection was stripped away to the NE and the tropical storm was no more. Marco was briefly a hurricane, but when it was TS Laura was just South of Cuba in the Caribbean. By the time Laura central low crossed Cuba and entered the GoM, Marco was history.
That is why the Dunning Facebook post was taken down. It never happened.
But wasn’t Marco a tropical depression before hitting land and inland before Laura even became a hurricane? Technically, there weren’t two hurricanes in the Gulf at the same time.
So, Marco was a hurricane less than half a day. Had this been 1933, this brief of an event could not have been measured. And in 1959, this brief of a hurricane could have easily been missed (weren’t flights into hurricanes only done daily then).
Therefore, the “unprecedented” two hurricanes in succession IS utterly contrived, massaged, misleading, wrong — because this August even is no different than those other events in living history.
I do recall one summer-into-fall season (still had a black & white TV then) when something like 9 hurricanes formed in the Gulf of Mexico, went right up the east coast. turned right at Greenland and crossed the northern Atlantic and went down the European and UK coast. One slamming storm after another. I do not remember what year it was, but probably 1998, 1999 or thereabouts.
After that, I got a color TV. Lots more fun.
When you read the drivel the newsies in media produce, you have to remember that they have been led to believe we’re all doomed unless we can control Climate, but they have no explanation regarding how we mere humans are to control something intangible like the weather.
Maybe some day, they’ll grow up.
Black & White ?!
Maybe you remember:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Atlantic_hurricane_season
Only vaguely, because I think that summer was spent in college in the central Midwest and the weather reports were nothing like they became 30 years later.
Yes, B&W TV, because color sets were still too expensive.
Controlling the climate is easy.
1) Hold a gun to everyone’s head.
2) Force us to live under Marxism.
3) Then cancel any journalists who still say there are hurricanes.
DONE.
Wow. You didn’t get a color TV until 1999?? I had one in the early 70s, being raised by a single mother, with not much money at all.
I remember watching Disney’s “Wonderful World of Color” … in black and white.
I also remember when they starting using color on election night (We had a color TV by then.).
Different networks used different colors. The network that used red and blue used red for the Democrats and blue for the Republicans.
They’ve all settled on red and blue now but the parties have been reversed.
The original was more accurate.
Despite Media Alarm, Back-to-Back Gulf Hurricanes Have Happened Before
Does it matter now?
70 days to save the Earth …
… we’re all in. Are you? On November 4, a day after the presidential election, the US will formally withdraw from the Paris agreement on constraining global heating. It’s urgent that we tell the world what this means, and the Guardian is pulling out all the stops to do so.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/24/tropical-storm-marco-louisiana-tropical-storm-laura-cuba
We could do with a little global heating in the UK
Marco barely made it out of tropical storm to Cat before it fell apart and made land fall as a weak tropical storm. The disappointment of some MSM reporters was obvious. Laura looks more dangerous and could get to Cat. 4 at land fall. I’d be evacuating if I lived near the TX/LA border.
“ I’d be evacuating if . . . ”
. . . evacuating was not so dangerous.
See: H. Rita evacuation deaths
“Back-to-Back Gulf Hurricanes Have Happened Before”
The North Atlantic Basin is just one of six tropical cyclone basins. According to the baseline climate science paper that defines the climate change relationship with tropical cyclones (Knutson etal 2010), the expected impacts of agw on tropical cyclones can be understood only in the aggregate total cyclone energy for all 6 basins over a time span of more than 30 years. Details here …
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/11/14/hurricane-obsession/
Around 2001 my son who was working as a lineman for an electrical company in the northeast US started going on storm repair duty for major storm damage in the US and Canada. Ice storms and hurricanes being the two major types that he would be dispatched too. He got me hooked on checking out the National Hurricane Center’s website and it has become a daily occurrence for me to check it out during hurricane season.
Usually the discussion is pretty straight forward but I have noticed how several of the named storms this year have only been so for a very short duration. Seems like the NHC is getting caught up in the media hype too. I think that many of these short lived fish storms would never be reported and without giving that information to the press the NHC is just fueling the hysteria. For example either Laura or Marco or both were the earliest for those letters on record and that in unprecedented.
Fortunately, if current predictions hold, Hurricane Laura will weaken a bit just before landfall as it comes ashore on a sparsely inhabited stretch of the SW Louisiana coast. A couple of small beach communities of a few dozen homes on stilts and mobile homes will likely be wiped away. Sad, but no major destruction. Port Arthur, Texas may get storm surge damage, and Lake Charles, LA may get lessened hurricane force winds and heavy rain. The media will be disappointed and will quickly get bored, then move on to other “crises.” (e.g., Kenosha, WI rioting; California wildfires; Republican National Convention) They are having self-satisfied fun mocking conservatives.
Holly Beach, a dozen miles west of Cameron, was rebuilt after Rita, not so fancy as the Texas Bolivar Peninsula replacement east of Galveston after Ike. Low county, Rita put water way up, so will this one. Quite a bit rebuilt around Cameron. Holly Beach is the muddiest swimming beach existing, joke was first prize was one week cabin at Holly Beach, 2nd prize two weeks. Won’t be much left this time either, some built stronger but still flooded with Gulf beach surge. Rita was the first big one there since Audrey in 1957.
Actually knew somebody that won a free cabin for a few days.
Seems you are spot on. Your crystal ball is working well. Yes it was a very strong storm but fortunately positioned away from major cities. Just wondering what happened to the 40 miles storm surge past I10?
OMG!!! Two hurricanes at the same time!!??!?!?! We’re doomed, I say, doomed.
Marco was a complete nothing-burger. Couldn’t even muster a flash flood watch as it dissipated quickly offshore. They’ll probably record it as a hurricane because hurricane hunter aircraft briefly observed apparent hurricane-force winds while Marco was still far out to sea. It veered west just off the Louisiana coast and rapidly disappeared. I was disappointed because we could have used some rain. Maybe Laura will bring some welcome rainfall to typically August-dry East and Central Texas. For all of their hyped damage, hurricanes and tropical storms can also be beneficial in breaking the late-summer dry spells, harkening to approaching fall weather.
Ever notice how, once the “top story” gets a bit cold, everyone practically forgets about it? It is difficult to find after action reports about what ACTUALLY happened, because reality rarely lives up to the media hype.
Yeah, as soon as I heard of this I did a newspaper archive search and found a example for 2003. It isnt that rare.
Let us not forget the 1886 Indianola hurricane, the 8th strongest landfalling hurricane in US history. It made landfall as a category 4 on August 20. On September 23, a category 2 hurricane made landfall almost at the exact same spot. The earlier very powerful hurricane did not cool the waters enough to weaken that hurricane. And on October 12, a category 3 hurricane made landfall about the same spot this one, Laura, will.
Or what about 1954. On August 31, category 3 Carol made landfall, first on Long Island in New York, then in Connecticut. When was the last category 3 to hit that far north? You better believe that if that happened today there would major caterwauling by the media. But wait, less than 2 weeks later, Edna made landfall near Carol as a very strong category 2. How warm were the waters in 1954 so that two very strong hurricanes made landfall that far north? 1954 also saw the only recorded category 4 hurricane in North Carolina history.
One storm to shut up all the alarmist and their ilk is the 1935 Labor Day hurricane. It went tropical depression to strongest landfalling hurricane in US history in 30 hours. How warm were the waters to go from little to one of the strongest ever in 30 hours? This was 1935. The usual response I get from the true believers is to always ignore it and keep going.
Oh yeah t e le v i s i o n, I remember that…… come on people do your brain a favour and turn that sh@t off.
Based on the storm track of Marco, which was a Cat 1 hurricane for less than 12 hours, the center of the storm might have clipped the barrier islands off Louisiana. By then I am not sure it was even a tropical storm.
The Climate Crusades in support of the newest religion are clearly unprecedented and a new existential threat to sustainable living and incomes. There is nothing in the fossil record that compares to the self immolation with policy directives, although mass beaching of dolphins and whales come close for shear disorientation.
Monica Medina is a classic swamp dweller and Big Government parasite.
“A patriot is one who loves his country and expects to be paid for it.”
-Mencken
This seems to be very much a pattern lately: claims about “first ever” and such, when it’s not. It’s as if history started in 2008 (or 2016, depending on the claim)
Is Laura actually a Cat 3 Hurricane? We’ve seen this show before in the last several years where a storm is hyped as being a Cat 3 or Cat 4 and we find out the classification is a guestimate based upon wind speeds at 2 miles up or by satellite observations of some sort or another while the ground observations end up indicating a strong Cat 1 or weak Cat 2, at best.
I know that any hurricane can cause extensive damage; storm surge, winds, rain, etc. However, Hyping every storm as a major hurricane is setting a precedent that you can ride out a Cat 3 or Cat 4 storm. It will end up getting people killed when the next REAL Cat 3 or Cat 4 makes landfall.
Max P
Well they are now saying that it’s a Cat 4 storm. – 15 to 20 ft storm surge, which is not good as the land there is 4 – 6 feet above sea level… We’ll see. Hope it doesn’t hit at high tide…let me check – Port Arthur TX high tide at 4:37 am Thursday morning. (Aug 27, 2020)
– JPP
Weather buoy at Calcesieu Pass, LA: if this hurricane had 150mph winds, then something close to that should have been recorded by this buoy. OR, pick a buoy of your choice.
Its greatest sustained wind was 74 knots (85mph) , and greatest gust was 93 knots (107mph). This is recorded history.
Wikipedia has an entry for “maximum sustained winds.” This includes how they “model” an estimate from various sources. The modeled number is not the one that takes down your house, or pushes water up your bayou. The actual wind at 10 meters does.
I have posted similar posts over recent years with other hurricanes. Yes, they are dangerous and disruptive. People have died. But we need to know we can rely on weather sources for straight news. They are not doing this. They are going for clicks, or for a bigger slice of the federal government support pie, or the professional notoriety, or something.
We regular everyday citizens have lost trust in the people who are supposed to give us the straight info on hurricanes. Sadly, this has happened for a virus outbreak, as well. Also, major news networks made tons of advertising dollars trailing the “Vast Russian Conspiracy” story, until NOTHING could be found by a team of 40 FBI agents and a budget of $25 million, given all access to whatever info and interviews they chose (and chose to avoid). On top of all of that, when we had a congressional hearing about it, we see the Lead of this investigation, Mueller, is more Inspector Clouseau than Sherlock Holmes.
What is truth, and what is hype? Can we trust (R), or (D)? Can we trust the evening news?
Frankly, we cannot even trust ourselves, or family members and friends. I regularly talk with long-time friends, and family, about politics. Long-time Dems fail to see that we have hitched our wagon to Communists, and how everybody except us sees this. We all thought we saw a cognitively impaired Trump, but we cannot see a cognitively impaired Biden.
Sometimes, we have to learn things the hard way.
Station CAPL1 – 8768094 – Calcasieu Pass, LA
https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=capl1
As a kid growing up in Philadelphia, my parents managed to acquire a cabin in a summer community on a creek in lower Bucks county. We were already back in school when a Hurricane (tropical storm) driven rain flooded the creek, which came up under our cabin. I remember the most notable thing were the sun perch swimming around in the old wringer washer under the porch. One week later, another storm (bigger) dumped on the water shed, and this time we had water to the rafters. Several of the cabins were totally destroyed, and one that had been located at the up stream portion of the meadow (flood plain) got washed off of it’s foundations, and came to rest near the down stream area. Next summer the owners re-leveled it in it’s new location and enjoyed their summer. This was sometime around 57 give or take a year. Those two floods were almost the end of our time “up the creek” , but mom was out voted, and I contribute my relative sanity to being able to get out of the city every summer.
You don’t understand – what they mean by “unprecedented” and other such commentary is that they (the journalist) had never heard of this before. Since journalism schools crank out unprofessional people with no ability to understand or research their topics, this is all you get from propaganda sites like CNN.
Good point, Robert.
What the journalists should be saying is: “I’ve never seen or heard anything like this”. That way they would be reporting factually.
Or “unprecedented” means before cell phones.
I watch this guy’s channel since last year’s season. He disavows being “official” at the beginning. He doesn’t report on mid-Atlantic storms while there are storms nearing the cost. You can view his old vids for history.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Meridionaljet
There’s a subject bar that needs to be selected to get a history. Here’s the link to the Videos in case you don’t see it. Scroll down a couple years and watch Maria sit over Puerto Rico.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Meridionaljet/videos
Alex – Katrina and Rita for $600.